‘Tis the season for ‘Pay it Forward’ at the Starbucks drive thru. This is when one a car offers to pay for their own beverage, plus the order of the car behind them. It can trigger a string of cars, all who arrive at the beverage hand-off window and discover their order has been paid for by the car ahead of them, and then that car offers to pay for the car behind them.
A reader wrote to me today to tell me that a store he’s familiar with had a 73-car chain of “Pay it Forward” today (December 13, 2013)!! The Pay it Forward chain happened between about 7:00 am and 8:30 am at the Buck and Lemon Starbucks in Reno, Nevada. I think 73 cars is impressive! What a great pic of a partner keeping tally of all the cars!
I thought this a great Starbucks story! It seems like the Pay it Forward phenomena is something that happens at the drive–thru, and there really isn’t a cafe equivalent of it. If you’ve got a great Pay it Forward story, please share it!
Happy Holidays!
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We had a lady come in this week and want to pay for someone’s order in the cafe behind but no one would take her up on it. So she bought a $15 gift card and told me to give it to someone that I wanted to. About 30 minutes later I ended up using it for the orders of the next few people that I could letting them know their order was on one of our customers. Was great to see the joy in their faces!
I paid it forward the other day at the drive thru in Rapid City, SD. The lady behind me had such a big smile on her face and waved in appreciation!!
This just makes me all warm inside 🙂 I love random acts of kindness and enjoy making others smile ♥
P.S. 73 cars IS quite impressive…
Absolutely great gesture and nice idea. I have paid for people and see the joy in their face something that you cannot see through written communication. Reno SB I applaud you and your customers!
The reason it doesn’t happen in the cafe is the person behind’s order isn’t known at the time of payment and then there’s the confrontation about “I don’t want you to pay for me!” which can’t happen in the drive-thru… it’s a done deal.
I’ve tried to pay for the people in line behind me inside the store by my work (no drive-thru at this location) and I get odd looks and responses like: “um, no” and “what, are you rich or something?”
It seems we don’t do enough of this to change people’s mindsets that others can be nice and just wanting to do a nice thing.
I might want to try this at the Starbucks near my house, which has a drive-thru.
@Marty – I think that GreyGhost is right. Inside the stores, there is the opportunity to confront someone about paying for an order, and that doesn’t exist with the drive thru. I have heard of stores where one person buys a $50 gift card, and asks the register partner to pay for as many orders in a row as possible with it — but what’s weird is that the last person doesn’t usually put a new $50 on it. I would, if it were me. Or along the way, people don’t offer to make incremental $5 additions to that card. The stories just end when the $50 card is used up.
Actually, all of this reminds me a bit of the “Jonathan’s Card” episode from roughly 2 years ago.
http://mashable.com/2011/08/12/jonathans-card-shut-down/
Add and take from one card – and it worked for a while, but Starbucks eventually shut it down.
To be honest, I have never seen a Pay-It-Forward work as well as I’d heard from other experiences – but I just realized that it’s because I’ve only been in lobby, not DT! The ability to see the order behind you & pay for it is unique to DT and it never works very seamlessly in lobby. I appreciate the perspective!
We used to have a customer who would, once a month or so, leave his card at the register and tell us to pay for everyone’s drink behind him until his drink was ready. So that was a different take on it – though more generous!
I don’t drive and therefore can’t use the drive-thru. BUT maybe I’ll leave my card up at the register until my drink is ready sometime. This is awesome!
There was a lady one of our regulars. She was not paying forward but giving flowers. Everytime she was coming she was bringing the flowers for the next guest which order the same exact drink. It’s so much fun to see people getting flowers from the stranger 🙂 it’s great
@Galina – That’s a cute tradition with the flowers! I bet that is fun to watch!
@Melody.. that’s sad about Johnathan’s Card. I hadn’t heard of that before. Good while it lasted, but misuse from others stopped something cool.
Yeah, maybe that’s why the drive-thru is the better option. Not much people can do to say no.
Although, an acceptable “no” would be if you needed one last star to get Gold for the year.
Melody just to let you know the post you just wrote about instagram pics and new products is not showing. Not sure if you are aware. Wanted to tell you there is a big article in today’s NYT Styles section on instagram. Great pics on your page. Thank you.
I love when customers pay it forward in the drive thru! 2 days ago in my cafe, a customer came in and asked to put $50 on a starbucks card and use it on the customers who came after him. It lasted for about a half an hour (it was peak time), and the lady who found out she still owed a balance loaded it for another $50! Those two customers made so many peoples day, it reminded me why I love being a starbucks partner 🙂
Melody did you see your name mentioned in an online ABC news article about this story? Congrats.
http://abcnews.go.com/m/blogEntry?id=21278299
Purple1 I saw this!