Single Mom Bartender Receives $1,000 Tip on $32.40 Bill from Couple Celebrating Anniversary

By Amanda Thomason August 6, 2018 at 12:50pm

If you’ve ever worked a job where you received tips, you know how much of an impact they can make. They can mean the difference between being able to pay rent or not, or being able to get all the school supplies your kids need rather than hoping the teacher will cover for you.

Anna Hofstetter from Brown County, Indiana, works hard for her little family. She’s a single mom holding down three jobs to try to make ends meet.

For one of her jobs, she’s a bartender at Hotel Nashville, and she happened to be in the right place at the right time when she served a couple there celebrating their anniversary.

She struck up a conversation with them, they chatted a while, and she found out that they had gotten married at that same hotel. They got some drinks, an appetizer, and their meals, and were on their way.

They hadn’t even spent $40, but the tip they left was staggering. It came with strings attached, though.

“They sat at a little table right by the door, and they said that they got married here at the Hotel Nashville seven years ago,” the mom said, according to Fox. “Their check came out to $32.40. And when I picked up the receipt, I was a little taken aback.”

The generous couple had left a $1,000 tip with instructions: “give something for kids.”

That was a decent chunk of change for Hofstetter. That could turn into a lot of meals, maybe even a vacation.

But she thought about her own two kids, and then she thought about all the kids in the community, and she knew she wanted to do something bigger with it than just use it for themselves.

Many in the community have been petitioning for a youth park: a safe place for kids and teens to hang out.

The group leading this effort called Kids On Wheels needs $120,000 to start the park. At the moment they have $25,000 — but they’ve been promised a $50,000 grant if they can hit that same number by September 22.

“For generations, Brown County Teens have felt a void from lack of public space,” the Patronicity page for Kids On Wheels reads. “We’ve always discussed ideas to make our quaint tourist town more inviting and supportive of young adults who live here.”

“We dreamed about an outdoor space created to meet the needs of teens, based on their ideas and suggestions. The idea that has come up the most often? A skate park, surrounded by conversation areas and other features that would engage older kids in a safe place.”

Thanks to a lovely couple and a selfless mother, the park is $1,000 closer to being completed!

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