You can’t buy much for two dollars these days, but in Philadelphia, you can feed yourself and a homeless neighbor with just a couple of bucks.
After leaving a successful Wall St. career because he found it unfulfilling, owner Mason Wartman opened Rosa’s Fresh Pizza in late 2013. He had witnessed the popularity of the one-dollar pizza joints in New York City and decided that a the concept might work in his native Philadelphia.
“I knew that we would be feeding homeless people because we’d be providing affordable food,” says Wartman. “About three months into operation, a paying customer asked if he could pre-purchase a slice for a homeless person. And so I ran out, got a stack of Post-it Notes to remind myself and the employees that we could help someone out when they came in short.”
Before long, the walls of Rosa’s became covered in Post-it Notes. Each one signifies someone who has given a dollar so that that a homeless or hungry person can enjoy a meal at no-cost. The messages on some are simple; others have drawings or a friendly letter.
Each day, a few dozen homeless people file into Rosa’s to enjoy the kindness of their neighbors. In the last year, Wartman reports that this system has provided more than 14,000 free slices for Philadelphians in need.
“This is way more rewarding than what I used to do on Wall Street,” says Wartman. “I learn a ton everyday, I meet really cool people — homeless and not homeless. I get to see a positive difference being made in a city that I really love. So, what more could I ask for, right?”
Tag: pizza
Rosa’s Fresh Pizza Has Given Away More Than 8,400 Slices to the Homeless
Rosa’s Fresh Pizza in Philadelphia has an unusual type of wallpaper: Neon Post-it notes.
Each sticky slip represents a customer who gave an extra dollar so that a homeless person could eat a slice.
The pay-it-forward menu began nine months ago, owner Mason Wartman tells NPR, when someone asked if he could buy something extra for the homeless. “I said ‘Sure.’ I took his dollar and ran out and got some Post-it notes and put one up to signify that a slice was purchased,” Wartman explains.
While lots of take-out restaurants have boxes near the register asking for loose change (a simple reminder of how many people are hungry), this pizzeria took it further, displaying the Post-its side-by-side with letters of thanks from grateful recipients — proving just how much an extra buck can impact someone in need of a meal.
Word of free cheesy, thin-crust pizza has spread, and about 30 to 40 homeless people drop by Rosa’s every day. Luckily, generous customers stop by in huge numbers, too. So far, the shop’s clientele has bought more than 8,400 slices for their neighbors living on the street.
“I just want to thank everyone that donated to Rosa’s,” one message taped on the wall says in bright red marker, “it gave me a place to eat everyday and the opportunity to get back on my feet. I start a new job tomorrow!”
On a paper plate, a homeless veteran writes, “God bless you. Because of you I ate off this plate, the only thing I ate all day.”
Wartman, 27, formerly worked as an equity research on Wall Street. After falling in love with $1-a-slice pizza in New York City, he brought the cheap and simple model back to his hometown and named Rosa’s Fresh Pizza (which he opened in December 2013) after his mother. Even with his knack for business, Wartman’s customers were buying so many free meals for the homeless that he had to abandon the Post-it system once it exceeded 500 slices. Now, he keeps tabs at the register.
Giving away food wasn’t enough for Wartman. Since last November, he’s been selling sweatshirts and donating one to a homeless person for each purchase. The fuzzy garment has his restaurant’s logo emblazoned on the outside and, inside, contains a schedule and a directory for local soup kitchens and homeless shelters. On “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” this week, he challenged national chains like Chipotle to follow suit.
Why do he and his customers do it? “They’re just really nice people, you know? Sometimes homeless people buy them for other homeless people,” Wartman says. “This is a super-easy way, a super-efficient way and a super-transparent way to help the homeless.”
This must be why they call Philadelphia the City of Brotherly Love.
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Why It Took A Plea From A Pizza Guy to Increase Michigan’s Higher Education Funding
As the recent news of Starbucks offering to pay for its employees college tuition reveals, higher education is not a privilege of the elite.
That’s a message education leaders in Michigan have been trying to illustrate to lawmakers as funding for higher education was reduced by about $1 billion in total cuts over the past 10 years. Back in 2011, the leader of another national chain pitched in to persuade Michigan lawmakers to include Governor Rick Snyder’s proposal for a 6 percent increase in funding higher education in the state’s 2015 budget.
“The fact that the pizza guy is coming to them to talk about higher education funding is unexpected,” said Patrick Doyle, the CEO of Domino’s Pizza.
Doyle, as a part of the Business Leaders for Michigan, argued that the state was not producing enough candidates with the skills to run and operate the online component of his Ann-Arbor-based company, which is one of the state’s biggest employers. In fact, just three in 10 adults in Michigan held a college degree—including only some, but certainly not all, of the state’s lawmakers themselves.
The Business Leaders for Michigan coalition, which is comprised of Michigan’s highest-ranking business and university leaders, contends that investing in higher education is integral to growth — just as much as population or jobs programs.
“It’s a producer of economic impact. It’s part of the overall economy,” said Doug Rothwell, president of the business leaders.
The coalition recognized higher education as an asset in its first release of the Michigan Turnaround Plan in 2009. The plan identified the state’s major strengths and areas for potential growth, which included Michigan’s higher education system as a major economic asset. Like elsewhere in the country, the group found a disparity between the available jobs and the workforce’s skills. Michigan ranks 30th for the nation’s educated workforce.
So why are they not being filled? In part, it’s because of the [lack of] college affordability,” Rothwell said.
The group began lobbying for performance-based funding as a means of increasing cash for colleges in 2011 before lawmakers allocated $21.9 million in new appropriations in 2014. Success rates are determined by such factors as graduation rates and administrative costs.
Though support has been gradual, Governor Snyder’s 2015 budget includes the largest increase to higher education funding in more than a decade. The boost — $80 million out of the $1.4 billion in funding — includes a 3.2 percent cap on tuition increases in order to receive full state funding.
Michigan’s inclusion of higher education funding is part of a greater trend sweeping the country. Only nine states have decided not to include some sort of funding increase for the 2015 budget, and 25 states have implemented policy for performance-based funding for their higher education institutions.
While performance metrics aren’t ideal for larger universities, the method does benefit all types of colleges and universities as a whole. As the Business Leaders for Michigan have illustrated, the education system is better off when higher education receives a bigger piece of the funding pie.
MORE: Delaware Pushes to Get More Low-Income Students Enrolled in Higher Education
The Next Military Technology to Boost Our Overseas Troops Is…Pizza
Food Scientists at the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center are nearing what they call the holy grail of ready-to-eat meals for soldiers stationed overseas: pizza. It’s one of the most requested items by soldiers when it comes to what they’d like to see in their rations, and David Accetta, a former Army lieutenant colonel and spokesman for the lab, says that having that hot, tasty meal goes a long way toward boosting attitudes oversees.
“In a lot of cases, when you are cold and tired and hungry, having a hot meal that’s something that you like and you would get at home, it increases your morale — and we consider that to be a force multiplier,” Accetta told the AP.
Long-lasting, ready-to-eat pizza is an achievement that has been so illusive because of the way that the moisture in the sauce, cheese, and toppings tended to migrate into the dough over time, making it soggy and more likely to lead to mold and bacteria growth. Advancements have come from using humectants like sugar, salt, and syrup that bind to water and prevent it from migrating. Scientists also manipulated the acidity of the ingredients to stifle bacteria growth and used iron filings to absorb oxygen in the pouch.
After all this research, what does the military hope to get? Pizza that lasts for 3 years in 80 degree temperatures, and some well-fed and happy soldiers.