The staff of a Dairy Queen in Minnesota was stunned when a drive-thru customer paid for the vehicle behind him, setting off a chain reaction that inspired more than 900 others to do the same.
On December 3, the anonymous customer paid for the person behind him in the Dairy Queen drive-thru, reports said.
Store manager Tina Jensen said the second customer was taken aback by the sweet surprise and asked to do the same.
“So the lady pulled up, and I said, ‘Just to let you know, the gentleman in front of you paid for your order. If you like, I can pay it forward, and you can pay for the order behind you, and we can keep this going,'” Jensen recalled, saying it was the woman’s “lucky day.”
From there, the small act of kindness kept getting bigger, as subsequent customers wanted to pay it forward, too.
The store manager said that she’s previously seen about 15 to 20 customers consecutively pay it forward, so this grand scale was unprecedented.
“Our fans were so excited. They didn’t want to break the chain. They wanted to keep that chain going,” Jensen recalled.
On Thursday, Jensen posted on the shop’s Facebook page that someone had donated enough to pay for more orders when Dairy Queen reopened on Friday morning—and the good deed snowballed again.
The Dairy Queen customers kept paying for each other’s orders through Saturday, with over 900 cars paying for $10,000 worth of sales.