Coffee-gifting bug strikes Canadians

Tim Hortons employees sample various coffees from around the world. A coffee-giving bug has gripped Canadians this week, causing them to spontaneously buy coffee for large groups of people. (David Friend/The Canadian Press)

Over 5,500 Canadian coffee drinkers got more than a little kick out of their cup this week when they found out their daily caffeine fix had already been paid for.

The coffee-kindness trend started Monday when a mystery man walked into a downtown Edmonton Tim Hortons and paid for 500 cups of coffee — for no apparent reason.

Coffee-cats spread the love

Monday:

• A mystery man walks into a Tim Hortons in downtown Edmonton and pays for his own, plus 500 cups of coffee.

Wednesday:

• An anonymous Calgary donor pays almost $900 to buy coffee for everyone behind him in queue at the Crowfoot Crossing Tim Hortons.

Thursday:

• An Ottawa bus driver buys $850 worth of coffee to pep up his peers around the Ottawa Trainyards location.
• A man buys 500 cups for others at the Tim Hortons in the Easthill Centre in Red Deer, Alberta.
• A man picks up the tab for 500 cups at Edmonton’s Royal Alexandra Hospital.
• Later that afternoon, a Monica Kavanagh, whose father is admitted in the same hospital, buys 800 more cups on hearing about the earlier act of generosity.
• A Saskatoon coffee-philanthropist buys 500 coffees for customers behind him in queue

Friday:

• Saskatoon radio station Rock 102 buys 500 coffee gifts.
• Another customer buys 285 more cups just after the station staff leave, making a total of $1,375 worth of free coffee at that venue.
• A patron at Northern Alberta Institute of Technology gives $500 worth of coffee to customers at the school.
• A donor buys 500 cups in Chestermere suburb of Calgary.
• Three anonymous patrons buy their fellow coffee drinkers hundreds of dollars worth of coffee at the same High River, Alta., coffee shop. CBC