How much is free pizza for a year worth to a dedicated Taylor Swift fan? The owners of Zee’s Pizzeria in New Orleans decided to find out: They recently offered to swap free food for two tickets to a concert headlined by the pop superstar—and, as it turned out, one customer was “ready for it.”
Zander White, co-owner of Zee’s, recently scribbled the offer on a chalkboard in his pizza shop: “Free Pizza For Swift Tix.” After all, scoring Swift tickets is no easy feat in the Ticketmaster era, not to mention Swift’s tour doesn’t include a stop in the Big Easy.
But White was desperate. “We’d scream if we could go,” he told WGNO. “Me and my wife are big fans, and we’d love to go. I don’t see a way to get tickets because they are way too expensive and too hard to get.”
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He added that Zee’s would provide “at least a year of free pizza for two Swift tickets.” Look what you made him do, Taylor! We knew you were trouble.
But, as WMUR has reported, a customer named Jeanine had an extra pair of tickets handy and made the Whites’ “wildest dreams” come true. Jeanine got free pizza for a year, and the Whites flew to Houston for the show.
“We are huge Taylor (Swift) fans, and we never thought it would actually happen. And when it did, we went and we didn’t know what to expect,” White told WMUR. “It was wild.”
The offer turned out to be a big score in more ways than one. In addition to landing the coveted tickets, Zee’s Pizzeria has garnered free publicity, as evidenced by the WGNO and WMUR interviews. The only thing that’s missing: White hoped the publicity would attract Swift’s attention, but that didn’t pan out. “I thought it would be funny, hoping Taylor would find out,” he told WGNO.
Dave Portnoy of Barstool Sports has already found out about Zee’s Pizzeria, which started as a food truck before opening a brick-and-mortar location on Baronne Street on July 28, 2022. Portnoy visited the truck and reviewed the pie in April 2022. “It’s got that East Coast vibe to it,” Portnoy said. “It feels like a New York-style pizza.” He pronounced it “really, really good” and gave it a 7.7 rating. “It’s a super-high, super-good, super-consistent, very good East Coast pizza.”