Not only does Rosa’s Fresh Pizza of Philadelphia serve up delicious New York-style pizza, they also serve up compassion, kindness, and inspiration. Customers at Rosa’s can “pay-it-forward” and buy a $1 slice that will feed hungry people in their community.
Mason Wartman left his job on Wall Street to open the pizzeria. He said the idea for pay-it-forward pizza came from one of his customers who left behind a dollar and a post-it note.
According to Upworthy, the customer was influenced by an Italian coffee house practice known as caffe sospeso, or suspended coffee where customers can pre-purchase coffee for needy customers. When the first pay-it-forward slice was purchased, Wartman wrote it down on a Post-it note and placed it behind the register so a needy patron could redeem it.
The pay-it-forward slice quickly became popular and now the notes cover his pizza shop.
Since then, Rosa’s have given out more than 70,000 slices to his hungry neighbors. And the slices are much-needed as Philadelphia is the poorest large city in the country, according to Upworthy, with 185,000 people, including 60,000 children, living at below half of the federal poverty line.
“We’ve given away 9,000 slices of pizza to homeless people — that’s $9,000 of business that wouldn’t obviously otherwise have gotten sold,” Wartman told CNN Money in February 2015.
More than 10 percent of Rosa’s business comes from the pay-it-forward slices.
It’s a perfect example of how businesses can make money while also benefitting their community. He was even featured on CNN Money for his business plan.
“I always wanted to open my own business,” he told CNN Money. “I decided to come back to Philly and start a dollar pizza store because I saw the success and proliferation of dollar pizza stores in Manhattan.”
He hopes that other businesses will come up with similar business models.
“We have thousands of restaurants throughout the country,” Wartman said. “We could feed a lot of people very quickly if just a fraction of them acted in similar ways.”
Wartman says that a homeless regular even came back after finding a job to purchase pay-it-forward slices for others to pay-it-forward after he was shown kindness. Some of his needy patrons even told them that the free slices prevent them from committing petty crimes in order to get money for food.
So not only is he feeding hungry people in his community, but he’s also preventing crime in his community. Rosa’s also inspires those with their Post-it note covered walls.
Homeless patron Michelle Rodriguez told CNN Money that in addition to the free pizza, she comes to Rosa’s for inspiration by reading the notes left behind by customers. This one is her favorite, “I’ve been where you’re at — believe in God, do the right thing, trust me your miracle will come — it just takes time.”
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