Just as a local Cleveland restaurant prepared to close because of the coronavirus, something amazing happened. A customer decided to give them the most amazing Christmas gift! It turned out to be the biggest tip any of them had ever seen…
Not A Joke, Nor A Mistake
Brendan Ring owns the Cleveland establishment Nighttown, a restaurant the locals love. As sad as closing made him feel, Ring knew he needed to do something drastic, to help with the coronavirus situation. So, he voluntarily shut down.
“Covid is so out of control in Ohio that I decided to voluntarily close down until January. We got kind of busy on Sunday with a lot of our regulars coming in since it was our last day,” Ring said. It broke his heart, but he knew it was the right thing to do. Then, a customer came in and turned Ring’s entire world upside down. “This guy came in and walked up to the bar and ordered a pint of Stella and he took a couple of sips out of it and said to the manager, ‘Can I just get my check?'” he continued. At first, Ring thought the semi-regular customer, who wants to remain anonymous, had a problem with the beer. But he had something else planned entirely!
On his $7 check, the anonymous man left a $3,000 tip! “He said, ‘Good luck to you guys and we’ll see you when you reopen,'” Ring recalled. Looking at the incredible gift, the Nighttown owner double-checked with the visitor: had there been some sort of mistake? Had he meant $3 or $30? “He said, ‘No, that’s what I intended. Share it with the staff, good luck to you guys, Merry Christmas and we’ll see you when you come back.'”
Protecting His Community
As it turns out, Ring is actually a bit of a prankster at work. So, at first, he had a hard time convincing the Nighttown staff that the $3,000 tip was real! The first waitress he told simply brushed it off! “She said ‘Yeah right, you did that’… the next server I showed it too, she started crying, she knew it was legit,” he said. Four workers were on the shift that night, so each received $750. In 2020, with a closure looming, that’s the difference between rent or not the next month. Incredible!
Meanwhile, Ring could not feel more thankful. His voluntary closure has waved heavily on him lately, and this helped. “Am I doing the right thing? Is this the right thing to do? I have to consider my staff, right,” Ring explained. “In the last two weeks, this COVID has gotten very, very close to all of us and I’ve had four customers, really close customers, get it.”
Now, the story of the $3,000 tip has gone viral. Ring even heard from his sister, who lives in Ireland, saying she had seen the story! “We’re all so desperate for uplifting news, if this was a normal year, yeah, this would be a good story, but it’s a great story because of the year we’re in,” Ring said. “The outpouring of love for this story has been universal.”