SE Portland restaurant owner trying to track down customer who left $5K tip, possibly by mistake
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PORTLAND, OR (KPTV) — If you get great service at a restaurant, you probably leave a good tip.
But one local business owner got a tip so big, he thinks it may have been a mistake. Now, he’s trying to track that customer down.
A great tip for great service isn’t unusual, but when someone tipped more than $5,000 for a $5 beer, Oniel Ortiz says something didn’t seem right.
“Usually when we have good tips, the customers let us know how great the service was,” Ortiz said.
Ortiz owns the San Felipe Taqueria on Southeast Milwaukie Avenue in Portland.
He says his wife was looking at their till on Sunday when she noticed the amount for Saturday night’s tips seemed unusually high.
So, they went through the transactions from the previous night, and that’s when Ortiz saw the receipt. It showed a $5 beer with a tip of $5,007.49.
Worried it might be a mistake, Ortiz decided to look through their security video and he found footage of the customer paying for his beer.
“We saw that the guy was having some kind of difficulties when he was doing his part and I think that’s when he made a mistake, maybe not understanding well what he was doing. He just made a mistake, which happens to all of us,” Ortiz said.
Ortiz says the man wasn’t one of his regular customers.
He also says he tried searching online for the man’s name but didn’t have any luck.
That’s when his wife suggested he reach out to the media for help.
“We’re looking for him,” Ortiz said. “My intentions here, once again, are to make sure that if he intends to leave us a tip, we want to at least say thank you to him, but if it was a mistake, we want to make sure he gets his money back.”
Ortiz says if he really meant it, the $5,000 will be split among his employees.
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