55 drive-thru customers ‘pay it forward’ at Massachusetts donut shop

On Friday, a drive-thru customer at Heav'nly Donuts in Amesbury, Massachusetts, paid for her order — and for the order of the customer behind her.

Eileen Taylor, the recipient of the generous gesture, was moved by the stranger's actions, so when she returned the next day, she decided to do the same and paid for the car behind her.

What she didn't know was that she was triggering a 55-car-long chain of "pay it forward" kindness.

"Fifty-five cars consecutively — it just kept going. And I thought that was just really something," Taylor told CBS Boston. "It was wild, crazy! Crazy at Heav'nly Donuts."

"It was the best $12 I ever spent," she added.

"We do have regulars who do pay for the customer behind them every once in a while, but never have we had a chain like today," Wendy Clement, the shop’s manager, said on Saturday. The woman who paid for Taylor's order last Friday regularly pays for the car behind her, she added.

"We didn't say anything until about the 17th or 18th car," Clement told the Daily News. "And then we said, 'Listen, we're on a streak here. You can pay for the person behind you or not. It's up to you.'''

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Clement said the chain continued for an hour and a half — until the last car in line had no cars behind it.

She told the Christian Post that the donut shop had a similar pay-it-forward chain last year, but it only lasted for 20 cars.