Over 50 Starbucks customers paid for the products of the vehicles in front of them at one of the coffee chain's locations in Detroit mlive.com reported Tuesday.
Trish Dewald, helped initiate several good deeds for the day after unexpectedly finding herself in a line for 30 minutes. Dewald had just brought her daughter to school.
"Would you like to pay it forward," the drive-thru window attendee inquired, according to Dewald.
"I was like, 'heck yeah," Dewald chief developer at the Detroit-based Coalition on Temporary Shelter told mlive. "Seriously, it was wonderful. When I saw this I just couldn't tear myself away. "I work at a homeless shelter and random acts of kindness are just so few and far between that I just think it's so beautiful," Dewald. "They didn't know what was happening; it was totally a surprise."
The program was part of Starbuck's pay it forward initiative, which began in October, and the same time the United States government was shut down.
"Support and connect with one another, even as we wait for our elected officials to do the same for our country," Starbucks chief executive officer Howard Schultz told ABC television station affiliate KTRK 13 at the time.
Starbucks gives a tall coffee to an individual courtesy of the company, if another good samaritan buys it for them.
"(Pay-it-forward" efforts like this happen frequently, but never of that magnitude," a Starbucks employee,)" told mlive.
Employees at the Detroit Starbucks cannot converse with the media unless they are allowed per company policy.
The program sparked fame from the movie "Pay it Forward" made in 2000. Actor Haley Joel Osment comes up with the thought when doing a project for class.
Rather than doing good deeds for people who have done nice things, acts of kindness would be unwillingly done do the next person if they wanted it.
