Brian and Stacy Weavel have been doing their part for diabetes research ever since their 11-year-old son, Alec, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes nearly a year ago. But the owners of Anna’s Pizza & Pasta, located in Winnebago, Illinois, really scored big with a pizza-making marathon promotion that raised nearly $8,000 this past weekend.

Using video and text posts, Weavel promoted the event heavily on social media, especially Facebook, for weeks before it kicked off at noon on Saturday, November 12. By the time it wrapped up at noon the following day, local media outlets like WIFR-TV and the Rockford Register Star had dropped by to provide coverage.

“It was a huge success,” Weavel told PMQ. “This little pizza place raised $7,600 for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation of Illinois. We made it through the entire 24 hours, and we did have orders coming in all night long! I don’t know exactly how many pizzas we sold, but the numbers were record-setting.”

The orders kept pouring in even on Sunday morning, as Weavel and his employee, Zach Brierton, baked up a total of 70 breakfast pizzas for the pizzeria’s hungry fans. “We had to send a customer out for more breakfast sausage and bacon,” Weavel notes. “It was a blast, and the Rockford-area media was all over it!”