By Tracy Morin
Whether they’re supporting school sports teams or donating pies and gift cards to fundraisers, you’d be hard-pressed to find a successful pizzeria that isn’t giving back to its community in some way. Pizzeria owners universally understand how important it is to reciprocate the love they receive from local customers.
But some of them go above and beyond when supporting causes that are especially dear to their hearts. Read on to hear, in their own words, the remarkable ways three brands are devoting themselves to giving back—and enticing their employees and customers to do the same.
Kelly Glynn, owner (with husband Brian Glynn), Village Idiot Pizza, Columbia, SC (two locations)
March of Dimes became our focus after our twins were born at just 28 weeks. They spent 71 days in the NICU, and over that time the research and development of lifesaving efforts for premature babies and healthy moms was very evident. We knew we wanted to support the organization that supported us.
We host an annual “Pizza for Preemies” campaign every November, which is Prematurity Awareness Month. This campaign is backed with a robust PR and marketing campaign to raise awareness of the cause and the fundraising efforts. All proceeds from the Feature of the Month, Pesto Preemie Vera, as well as all roundups, cutouts, straight donations and a percentage of sales for the month, are donated to March of Dimes. To date, that has been more than $72,000.
Our team members are well-versed in the cause and why it’s important to us. They have wearable buttons that say, “Ask me how to donate.” We also have cutouts that they can sell direct to customers, and the team member who sells the most wins a prize. Customers are engaged in many ways throughout the month—from team member engagement to the writing pens that we keep year-round that support Pizza for Preemies. We are also not afraid to tell our story, although I still get choked up every time.
Related: Village Idiot Brings Back the Pesto Preemie Vera Pizza for March of Dimes Campaign
We host “percentage of sales” nights each week at both of our locations, where we invite groups to partner with us for the night and they take a percentage of those sales back to their organization. We do programs with local libraries to encourage reading and give free pizza to those that participate. We fundraise for disaster relief and give back to organizations helping in the areas affected. Our Pizza-Gram program that started during COVID to feed hospital workers and first responders is still what we use to respond to need in our community, and more than 1,200 pizzas have been donated to date.
We are no strangers to fundraising for smaller community organizations, so we realize the impact we can have fundraising through pizza. Giving back is part of our brand and not just a social mission campaign. We have been hosting “percent nights” weekly for more than a decade, and they have been very helpful to many local organizations. Our decision to make a larger impact to one organization because of our story was born out of the success we have seen with these smaller fundraising efforts as well as our COVID campaign. Pizza brings people together, and we leverage that to help others.
Jaime Spinato. brand manager and director of community outreach, Spinato’s Pizzeria & Family Kitchen, Tempe, AZ (six locations)
Giving back has always been part of who we are, and in 2009, we founded the Kenneth A. Spinato Foundation to further our commitment to serving others. Through our three pillars—kids, veterans and service animals—we strive to make a meaningful impact and continue our tradition of community support. Throughout the year, we work with more than 130 nonprofits. Spinato’s supports them with pizza parties, gift card donations and silent auction items—on top of funding their causes, which accounts for about $100,000 annually.
In 2024, for the second consecutive year, Spinato’s Pizzeria & Family Kitchen, in partnership with our Kenneth A. Spinato Foundation, issued “The Kindness Challenge” to our guests to help the homeless and raise funds for St. Vincent de Paul. This unique fundraiser takes place in September, National Kindness Month, and runs through October 31. We’re currently planning our third event this year.
Our 2024 event grew to include the support of other businesses, and thanks to the support of the new sponsors, our Spinato’s team members and other caring volunteers created nearly 1,000 Kindness Bags full of toiletries, snacks, water, socks and other items. The Kindness Bags were located at each of our six restaurants for a donation of $5, with 100% of the proceeds going back to St. Vincent de Paul. We also encouraged our guests to purchase the Kindness Bags and distribute them to someone they saw who was in need of help.
Related: 10-Year-Old Philanthropist Makes Spinato’s ‘Nice List’ in Holiday Kindness Challenge
Meanwhile, the Nice List Holiday Kindness Challenge came about after Frost Communications, a local film and entertainment agency representing Amazon MGM Studios’ Red One movie, contacted us in the fall of 2024. We were challenged to devise an innovative, collaborative campaign that generated excitement among Spinato’s guests and movie fans. Spinato’s marketing director Erin Schultz and content creator Angela Moneyhon took the lead with developing a fun, creative campaign that included a “Nice List” contest, a Surprise & Delight kindness campaign (powered by Spinato’s elf interns) and a North Pole News broadcast. The grand prize for the Nice List contest was free pizza for a year.
Our winner, Mara Northey, was just 10 years old. When her parents nominated her, she was laser-focused on collecting shoes for the homeless to help Trevor’s Vision, an Anthem-based nonprofit that provides meals, clothing and other needed human services to homeless adults in Phoenix. We were so impressed with Mara’s service heart that we decided to help her meet her goal of donating 250 pairs of new shoes for Trevor’s Vision’s holiday event in December. Spinato’s donated $1,500 worth of new shoes towards Mara’s goal, and we joined her at the event, where Spinato’s provided pizza for 250 attendees and volunteers.
Giving back is at the heart of who we are. It’s not just something we do; it’s part of our core values. We often say that we’re in the people business more than the pizza business, and we believe all businesses have a responsibility to support the communities that support them. Our success is built on the generosity, loyalty and kindness of others, and we believe in reciprocating that by using what we have to make a difference.
While it’s true that guests gravitate toward businesses that are community-minded, our commitment to giving back started long before corporate social responsibility became a talking point. For us, it has always been about sharing our blessings and never neglecting an opportunity to do good. We continually strive to build an authentic culture of kindness—one that we hope inspires our guests, team members and the broader community to do the same.
Jay Jerrier, owner/founder, PILF Restaurant Group, Dallas, TX (13 locations)
Dogs have always been a big part of my life—growing up, we always had a dog. When I moved to Texas, we adopted a Hungarian Vizsla, a retired hunting dog with red fur (that’s where our pizzeria name, Cane Rosso, comes from; it means “red dog” in Italian).
There’s a really big problem in the South with hunting dogs being dumped in shelters or in the fields when they’re older or won’t hunt. There is a famous quote from comedian Lily Tomlin: “I always wondered why somebody doesn’t do something about that. Then I realized I was somebody.” We decided that we wanted to use our restaurants’ popularity to raise awareness about the plight of dogs in the Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma area. So we started our own 501(c)3 charity called Cane Rosso Rescue. At first, we started with just raising money. Then we expanded into finding foster families and eventually opening our own rescue facility.
Related: Cane Rosso Rescue Gives Lucky Dogs a Sporting Chance
A portion of every single sale from every restaurant in our portfolio (Cane Rosso, Zoli’s NY Pizza, Thunderbird Pies and Cow Tipping Creamery) is donated to the rescue to help fund facilities, staff, medical expenses and foster support. We also host adoption events on our patios for rescue dogs.
Over the years, we’ve developed a really strong following on social media for our restaurants—but also for our rescue. Our pages, canerossorescue on Facebook and Instagram, are very active, and we post a lot of success stories about adoptions and medical cases. We’re able to post information about dogs needing fosters, and to request help for transport or to volunteer (opportunities such as to come walk the dogs or help at the rescue center).
We’re fortunate enough to be very popular, and I think it is really important to be able to use that good fortune to give back to the community. It’s really just part of our DNA.
Tracy Morin is PMQ’s associate editor.
