Hoagie delivery guy gets vaccine ‘tip’ at Northeast Philly clinic

Eric Fink was delivering a hoagie party tray to a vaccination clinic at Lincoln High School in Mayfair when he got an unusual offer.

Councilmember Bobby Henon’s office had placed the order with Fink’s Hoagies, a popular Tacony sandwich shop. Eric, whose father owns the business, was in the process of completing the delivery Thursday when a representative from Henon’s office asked if had gotten his vaccination yet.

“I told her that I didn’t, I was planning on trying over the next few weeks since the city eased some of their guidelines,” said the 32-year-old Fink in a Twitter direct-message exchange with a reporter. The clinic was providing Pfizer shots for walk-ups, so he could get one, too.

“She asked me if I wanted the shot today, I asked right now? She said yes and we started the process right there. It took 30 [minutes] at the most and most of the time was the 15 [minute] waiting period post shot,” he said.

Then he posted a partial photo of his vaccination card showing his first name and wrote: “Just delivered hoagies to a vaccination site and my tip was a vaccination. Does it get anymore Philly????”

As of Friday evening, his tweet had received more than 38,000 likes and nearly 1,700 retweets.

One of the reweets came from the city’s Department of Public Health with the added comment: “Philly > your city! #VaxUpPhilly.”

Another commenter on Twitter said: “You musta got the Jawnson & Jawnson shot.”

Henon acknowledged the vaccine tip on Friday.

He wrote on Facebook that he ordered lunch “for our workers and volunteers from one of our favorite northeast Philly hoagie shops: Finks.. ”And yes, we vaccinated our delivery driver!,” Henon said.

The sandwich shop ended up donating the party tray “since they were helping out our community,” Eric Fink said.

Asked how the business has been holding up, Fink replied: “It’s been R O U G H and that might be an understatement. … It has slowly been creeping back up over the past month but we’re not back to normal yet.”

Fink said he had been hoping to get his shots in time for his birthday and a beach vacation.

“Looks like it’s now back in play,” he said.

— Robert Moran contributed to this article