Nancy Baker, owner of Dough Boys Pizza, was driving around her little community of Adel, Georgia, one day when she heard a voice of sorts conveying a simple but impactful message.
“Something just said to me, ‘Give back to the community,’ and I just said ‘lunches,’” Baker recently told WALB. “It just drove hard in my heart that I needed to start giving out lunches to kids.”
That led to the creation of Dough Boys’ Sunny Sacks & Smiles program, in which Baker now hands out 100 free hot-dog sack lunches from 10 a.m. to noon on every Wednesday morning.
Located in a small, rural town southeast of Albany, Dough Boys is no pizza giant and doesn’t even have a website—just a Facebook page. But that page has more than 4,700 followers, and Baker has a big heart to match her social media reach. She’s also painfully aware that low-income children in Adel and Cook County must go without school lunches during summer vacation.
Across Georgia, 13 million children will miss out on their school lunches this summer. And helping kids in need was something Baker was raised to do without giving it much thought, as she told WALB.
“I think it started with my mom, who, at Christmastime, would make us give away our old toys to the orphanage,” Baker said. “It only took a couple of years for her to tell me, ‘It’s time to get those toys,’ so the next year I already had them packed and ready to go.”
A simple makeshift sign on the restaurant’s storefront announces the Sunny Sacks & Smiles program. It’s not fancy or flashy, but, for locals, it communicates loud and clear that Dough Boys Pizza genuinely cares about their children.
Every lunch sack comes with a hot dog, chips, juice and a sweet treat. “We’re here to spread smiles and sunshine to our Cook County community—one brown bag at a time!” a recent Facebook post read.
“I’ve had a lot of people call, asking if we were giving away lunches this week,” Baker told WALB. “I’m trying to keep it rolling on Facebook so they know and trying to go ahead and put up the menu so they know what they’ll get in their bags. But I’m going to feed as many as I can.”
Additionally, Dough Boys Pizza will host the Kids Clothing Carousel, a back-to-school consignment sale taking place from July 23 through 26, and will give away school supplies for kids as well next month.
Dough Boys also offers super-affordable lunch specials—two slices and a drink for $6 and three slices and a drink for $7—as well as other value deals. Customers can lay down just $15 for the giant-sized Big Wheel Pizza (“bigger than your face and twice as delicious!”) with up to four toppings. For carb-conscious guests, the hometown pizzeria offers Crustless Pizza Bowls loaded with pizza sauce, toppings and melted mozz baked in a “cheesy, saucy bowl of YUM…It’s like pizza’s fun cousin that goes to the gym.”
Baker’s story demonstrates that supporting locals in need can yield rewards in terms of free publicity: The WALB segment was picked up by MSN.com, further spreading the word about Sunny Sacks & Smiles and shining a light on a pizzeria that was little known outside its community.
