Seattle cafe introduces ‘suspended coffee’

Some drive-through window customers have been known to pay the tab of the customer in line behind them. A Seattle cafe and coffee shop is embracing a different way to ‘pay it forward.’

If you buy two coffees at The Essential Baking Company in Wallingford, they’ll put a token in a jar at the counter. You drink one coffee and a future customer-in-need, a stranger, can take a token and have a cup for no charge.

The campaign is called “suspended coffee.”

In a blog post, the cafe says its manager, Ashley Mengoni, got the idea from a 100-year-old Italian tradition. After a few days, the cafe reported that nobody had abused the system and Mengoni reported that she’s still waiting for a customer on her shift to redeem one of the colorful coffee chips.

Customers like the idea and there’s some discussion about whether The Essential Baking Company could add food items to the suspended coffee campaign.