Server Feeds Baby So Exhausted Mom Can Eat, Thank You Goes Viral

This waiter’s kind gesture to parents at Olive Garden is going viral

Taking a baby to a restaurant is never easy, but one Arkansas couple got a sweet surprise when they stopped for a bite to eat after a long day at the hospital with a sick baby, and their waiter went out of his way to make sure they got a second to relax.

Little Rock mom Dallas French wrote on the Olive Garden Facebook page earlier this week that she, her husband, and their daughter, Ellee, stopped for dinner on their way home from some medical testing. “I was really out of it (and probably from the lack of sleep this past month),” she wrote, “but we went to Olive Garden in little rock after Ellee’s tests at children’s hospital and she was starving and I was trying to make a bottle and spilled it all over me an the floor [sic].”

French told WPVI her daughter, who’s only four months old, had just tested positive for E.coli, so she’d spent the past several days exhausted and sick with worry. She started making another bottle, just as their waiter was bringing their starters out. “Our waiter (wish I knew his name) watched all that happened and had just brought our salad and bread sticks and said ‘here let me feed her and you eat,'” she recalled.

French snapped a picture of the sweet waiter feeding her daughter, which she shared along with her post. “This melted all of us and this is what we need more of,” she wrote. “He fed her, I ate my salad and bread sticks, and that milk on the floor got cleaned up after we left because he just understood!”

Continued French, “He didn’t even know what we had went through that day and showed us love an understanding — not irritated that I had made a mess an my baby was screaming… Gosh I wish I woulda got his name because he deserves the recognition [sic]!!”

Since she wrote her post, it’s gotten over 145,000 likes and been shared almost 29,000 times. An Olive Garden social media manager even responded and said they’ll make sure the staff of the Little Rock location gets her message. Thousands of other people have also left comments complimenting the waiter and sending their well-wishes to little Ellee. It just goes to show that a simple act of kindness can ripple out farther than you ever thought possible.

There are a lot of stories out there about restaurants banning kids or business owners going on rants about children in their stores and eateries. Sometimes it’s warranted, of course, but it’s nice to see a story where parents (and their child) were shown compassion and kindness, rather than being treated as an annoyance. You never know what people are going through or when they could truly use a helping hand. Kudos to this waiter for going out of his way to be kind and making life a little bit easier for a worried mom and dad.