by Nick
Coffee shop customers pick up other’s tabs
April 18, 2009 in Food and Drink by Nick
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Some customers at Starbucks shops around the Birmingham area have been getting an extra ingredient with their coffee: Kindness. Customers at shops in eastern Birmingham, Hoover and Vestavia Hills are paying it forward by anonymously picking up the tabs of others.
Sharon Dierking got a taste of the movement when she pulled up to the window at a Starbucks on U.S. 280 and the barista told her the driver in the car ahead of her had paid for her order. “I was completely dumbfounded, but I was thrilled,” she said. Dierking was last in line that day, but was able to return the kindness to another at a Starbucks in Inverness a few days later. “It makes you feel good and it brightens your day,” she said.
A Starbucks spokeswoman said the Seattle-based company promoted a Cheer Pass program in 2007 to remind customers to spread kindness, but the recent phenomenon is “consumer-driven.” Catherine Ryan Hyde, author of the book “Pay It Forward,” launched the movement in 2000. Hyde wrote the book after two strangers helped her when she was stranded on a California road and her car caught fire. Stacie Elm, a barista at an Alabaster Starbucks, said a line of five cars recently paid it forward. Customers are usually surprised to find out their order is already paid for, she said.
“Most are like, ‘You’re kidding,’” she said.
