Blue Bloods star Donnie Wahlberg once again performed an incredible act of kindness, leaving a $2,020 tip at a restaurant in Plymouth, Massachusetts when his bill was only $35.27. Marshland restaurant owner Marty Finch said when the waitress saw the tip, her jaw dropped. Wahlberg did this at the beginning of the year as well, when he dropped the same tip at an IHOP on Jan. 2.
The Marshland restaurant shared a photo of the receipt on Instagram, thanking the New Kids on the Block member for his generosity. Wahlberg wrote “$2,020” on the tip line, adding the hashtag “#2020tipchallenge” under his signature. Finch told PEOPLE Wahlberg is a regular at the restaurant and always asks for a particular waitress, Denise Andrews. In fact, she even has his order of steak tips with grilled asparagus and poached eggs memorized.
Videos by PopCulture.com
View this post on Instagram
One thing Andrews did not expect was the tip. “When he left he just said, ‘Denise, you’re all set. The payment is on the table,’” Finch told PEOPLE. “She always says he’s a very good tipper anyway but her jaw dropped, to say the least when she saw that amount of tip.” Andrews shared the tip with her co-workers.
“Denise was very generous,” Finch explained. “She tipped out her fellow waitstaff and the guys in the kitchen, and she actually donated too. She’s working on getting two families turkey meals during the holidays, so she’s generous herself. Donnie said to pass it on, to keep this positive stuff going, so she’s trying to do that as well.”
Finch owns two other Marshland restaurants and said the coronavirus pandemic has made business difficult for him, just as it has other small business owners. He said it was a “blessing” that the restaurant could recently re-open. “We’re kind of like a homecooked-food-neighborhood-type restaurant, so it’s just been a really good feeling all around,” he said, adding that Wahlberg’s generosity was “just very uplifting for everyone.”
The 2020 Tip Challenge began in early January when a server at a Michigan restaurant received a $2,020 tip. On Jan. 2, Wahlberg and his wife, Jenny McCarthy Wahlberg, visited an IHOP in Illinois, where they left the same tip for a $75.45 bill. Server Bethany Provencher told PEOPLE she is a big NKOB fan and “freaked out a little” after she saw Wahlberg’s tip. “I couldn’t believe it. I mean, who does that? It was a blessing,” Provencher said at the time. “I just moved into an apartment, I’m a single mother—by myself with my son. So I struggle every day to make ends meet. And now I can buy furniture and put some money in the bank, and make sure my son is good.”
