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2020 has been low on pleasant surprises, that is for sure. One of the most pleasant surprises of all takes place when we are in the drive-thru and someone has decided to pay for our meal. This is not something that happens every day but we are definitely grateful when it does. Sometimes when someone pays for the car behind them, a small ripple effect begins. The next car pays for the car behind it, and so on – a small chain “pay it forward” chain is formed. That’s how things started at this Minnesota Dairy Queen, but no one expected it to continue on for nearly 3 days.

Nearly 1,000 cars participated in the pay-it-forward chain in Brainerd, MN.

It did not take long before this pay it forward chain became a community-wide initiative. Store manager Tina Jensen shared with KARE11 that the movement first began a week ago. One man pulled up to the window and said that he wanted to pay for the order of the woman behind him. The woman was informed about the random act of kindness and decided to keep things moving.

Thank you to all of our Fans for Paying it forward. It was awesome to experience 2 and a half days of you all paying it forward. We ended at over 900 cars paying it forward.❤️❤️❤️

Posted by Dairy Queen Grill & Chill on Saturday, December 5, 2020

“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.’ She’s like ‘really, why would he do that?’ I said ‘we just have it every once in a while where someone will take care of the person behind them and today is your lucky day,” Jensen shared with KARE11.

She continued, saying, “Our kitchen crew was like, ‘are we really still going?’ I said, ‘yep, we’re still going.’ Especially now and how things have been going this year, it definitely helped us here in the store with our crew members.” The Dairy Queen location ended up amassing $10,000 in sales over the course of the pay-it-forward chain as well.

Jensen has one final reminder for those who are looking to brighten up the holiday season for their fellow man. “No matter what hard times anyone is going through,” Jensen told KARE11, “just take care of each other, you know, that’s what it is…take care of each other.” We could not have said it better ourselves!

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