‘It’s scary’: Make an unemployed server’s day. Send love with Boise’s Virtual Tip Jar.

Tyler Brewington didn’t set foot inside Pengilly’s Saloon last week, but he went ahead and tipped two bartenders there anyway.

He sent them cash using Boise’s Virtual Tip Jar.

Using the template of a similar online spreadsheet in Washington, D.C., Brewington created the list to help Boise service-industry workers with incomes affected by social distancing. Days later, Boise Mayor Lauren McLean ordered restaurants and bars to close as the coronavirus began spreading in Idaho. Bartenders, waiters and baristas immediately were out of work.

More than 300 service-industry workers already have signed up with Boise’s Virtual Tip Jar, providing their Venmo, Paypal or Cash App details.

Unemployed Pengilly’s bartender Hana Beaton, 27, says it’s a big morale booster.

“It’s really nice,” she says. “I’m four months pregnant, and I have a daughter at home from school now. We were in the saving mode for the baby coming. And now I don’t know when I’ll have a job again, so it’s scary. It’s nice to know that people are lookin’ out. Because it doesn’t feel like anyone else is lookin’ out for us.”

“Lots of my regulars have sent me a little bit here and there. It’s not much, but it still helps. It’s mostly the mental thing, just knowing that ... you’re not totally forgotten. We’re all in this together, still.”

Brewington, 42, doesn’t expect Boise’s Virtual Tip Jar to replace the entire incomes of unemployed workers, he says. “But if you have a couple of bucks to spend, it could be a really nice way to reach out to one of your regulars and be, ‘I’m thinking of you. I hope it helps.’ ”

“Hana sent me a really sweet thank-you note,” he adds, “which felt good.”

Before COVID-19 uprooted the globe, Brewington, who lives downtown, spent significant time at his favorite coffee shops and bars. A freelance writer, copy editor and poet, he also worked at The Flicks and Flying M Cofeehouse when he was younger, he says.

“I have a lot of friends who work at Flying M, who work at Neurolux, who work at Pengilly’s,” Bewington says. “I still have really close ties to the service industry. It’s kind of where my heart is.”

Beaton is grateful that her husband, Ryan Stallcup, still has a job at a motorcycle shop. In the meantime, she’ll treasure any token of appreciation that Boise’s Virtual Tip Jar provides.

Beaton hopes to be eligible for $180 in weekly unemployment compensation soon. But she doesn’t know when.

Either way, it will be nothing close to her payday at Pengilly’s.

“I usually make around $600 a week,” Beaton says, “and that $600 is enough to pay bills and rent and not have much left over. I have no idea how I’m going to make it on $180 a week.”

This story was originally published March 24, 2020 at 5:00 AM.