The most inscrutable rich person in San Francisco has surprisingly pedestrian taste in coffee. We’re talking utilitarian, non–name brand, get-in-get-out java at a downtown coffee shop with acceptable but not outstanding Yelp reviews. In this Blue Bottle–or–bust town, you’d expect something fancier. Especially because the man who picked out this humble rendezvous has become internationally famous as the nameless mastermind of a syndicate that’s left nearly $130,000 in ultra-outsize tips—all accompanied by the cryptic insignia “Tips for Jesus”—at restaurants and bars in more than a dozen cities in the United States and Mexico over the last six months. Globe-trotting mega-benefactors: They're just like us.
Sitting at an outside table, the tipper—who would speak to me only in exchange for complete anonymity—explains that it all started back in September, at a bar in Ann Arbor, Michigan, after a college football game. He has, as he says, "been fortunate" in life, and he and his friends have long been tipping generously. But for some reason—he doesn't actually remember all the details now, he says, mild sheepishness spreading across his face—they decided that afternoon to give their server a $3,000 tip on an $87.98 check and, crucially, to post a photo of the receipt to Instagram.
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