Article Idea: Veterans, Prisons... & Pizza!

[brad_randall]

While listening to NPR last night I heard a really interesting story about Veterans doing fundraising by having pizza sales in prison.

The veterans have permission to do three pizza sales a year. They have a lot of customers – about 4,000 inmates. And it’s not everyday an inmate gets the chance to order their own Domino’s Pizza. The veterans group makes about $30,000 a year. About half goes to community groups like Blythe Little League, and the local Girl Scouts. The other half goes to the Independence Fund. That fund provides support for injured soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan.

I’d love to learn more about the logistics of these pizza sales. How many pizzas and how is the whole thing coordinated? I think this whole story would make for a really interesting read in a future PMQ issue.

 

[Kris]

We used to do this until they changed the security level at a nearby prison and now they no longer let the vets in.

Ours was done on Super Bowl Sunday. We are closed Sundays so it worked out awesome. We started at the close Saturday and worked all night until delivery around noon.

The inmates pay for their pizzas so we did have to offer a discount but with the volume it was worth it.

We just gave them a couple of choices of pizza, sub or salad.

We got the order about 2 weeks ahead of time. There is a major security check so trying to keep these hot are useless.

We had to rent a u haul for delivery so as they came out of the oven they were marked and went in the u haul.

The inmates have microwaves (go figure) so they warmed them up.

We kept the choices very limited cheese, pepperoni, sausage or veggie. Oddly enough the veggie outsold every year. I guess cuz they got several toppings for same price…the coordinator said they have their own meats they can add or something.
It was quite the experience!