Customer 229

One December morning in 2012, in southeast Winnipeg, a car pulled up to a Tim Hortons drive-through.

The driver ordered. Then they also paid for the order of the car behind them.

The next person reached the window. Their order was already paid for. So they did the same for the car after them.

And it kept going. One car, then another, then another.

For about three hours, 228 customers in a row paid for the order of the stranger behind them.

Customer 229 drove off with four coffees paid for by the car ahead. And left the next car a bill for three coffees.

The chain stopped there. But 228 gestures had had time to pass from hand to hand.

At Tim Hortons, spokesperson Michelle Robichaud admitted they had never seen anything of that magnitude.

This gesture has a very old cousin in Italy.

In Naples, about a century ago, a person who had had a stroke of luck would walk into a café. They would order one coffee but pay for two. The second stayed "suspended": caffè sospeso.

The barista kept a log. Later, someone less fortunate would come in and ask if there was a suspended coffee. They drank it for free.

The one who gives and the one who receives never meet.

The custom faded during the postwar boom years. Then it came back during the eurozone crisis.

With the backing of Naples mayor Luigi de Magistris, organizations declared December 10 Suspended Coffee Day.

The gesture travelled. In Bulgaria, more than 150 cafés joined in. In Barcelona, Gonzalo Sapina started the Cafés Pendientes network. In France, cafés display "café en attente." Canada is also among the countries where establishments take part.

A Neapolitan writer, Luciano de Crescenzo, remembers "a beautiful custom." To him, that small coffee was:

A coffee does not fix inequality. But it tells someone, without knowing them: somebody thought of you before you arrived.