In another example of pizzerias doing good deeds in their communities during the coronavirus pandemic, two pizzerias in very different parts of the country are making sure to keep elderly and disabled people fed through customer-donated pizzas.
The Fort Pierce, Florida location of Big Apple Pizza & Pasta, owned by Scott Van Duzer, recently made front-page headlines in the St. Lucie News Tribune for its “Slices for Seniors” program.
Customers can pay $20 to have a pizza delivered to a senior citizen—either living in a nursing home or self-isolating in their own residence—along with a homemade card created by a school-age child and a T-shirt.
Since elderly people are considered high-risk for COVID-19 infection and death, many nursing homes have suspended visitation, leaving seniors cut off from their loved ones. “I know how it would devastate me if my mom was in a nursing home and I couldn’t see her,” Van Duzer told the News-Tribune.
Big Apple Pizza sent pizzas to more than 600 seniors in the first week of the program, the newspaper reports. “It just lights up the residents’ faces,” one nursing home executive told the News-Tribune. “There was one resident—she was crying because she has no other family beside us, and it was touching that someone remembered her.”
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Van Duzer has also been delivering free pizzas to families facing food insecurity as well as healthcare workers around the area and added pizza kits to its delivery menu last month.
Meanwhile, in a land far, far away—Wasilla, Alaska, to be specific—Knik Goose Bay Pizza Company has shut its doors to the public and only makes pizzas for elderly people in need, according to the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman.
Owner Lorrie Moffitt usually has four employees working in her kitchen, but she sent them all home more than two weeks ago. Now she’s the only one there, baking pies donated by customers and delivering them to seniors and disabled people who can’t leave their homes. “We want to be able to protect the seniors and make sure they’re fed … and provide some social interaction and remind them that they are not forgotten,” Moffitt told the Frontiersman.
