Man Gives Away Hundreds of Free Pizzas For Charity, Lowering Them From Apartment Window
At the beginning of the pandemic, Ben Berman's second story apartment window was the mode of delivery for handmade pizza.
Berman was seen lowering 16 handmade pies, one by one, to his friends waiting below on the street. The group had a pizza party planned, but had to cancel because of the virus.
“I had 40 feet of string I’d ordered from Amazon, so I made a little pulley, bagged them up and gave them to everyone that way,” he said. “I came up with the idea because I didn’t think it was a good idea to eat 16 pizzas all by myself.”
As things became more dire by the summer, Ben decided he wanted to something to raise the spirits of his friends and neighbors. “I was talking to my girlfriend, and she suggested that pizza was the way to do it,” said Berman, 28.
“So I decided to make free cheese pizzas and lower them out my window to anyone who wanted one, with a suggestion that they make a donation to charities that help people who are hungry or homeless.”
“I thought, ‘If I can make people smile by dropping pizzas down to them from my apartment, why not?' ” he said.
Berman decided to name his idea, calling it Good Pizza PHL, and started an Instagram page to let people know when the pizza drops are.
He's raised over $47,000 for two charities; Philabundance and Project HOME.
It was easy to tell when he made it big, because Dave Portnoy came by for one of his well known pizza reviews. After Berman got a positive review and celebrity endorsement, his followers grew an extra 17,000.
“Donations started coming in from everywhere and so did the requests for pizza,” said Berman, who uses pays for ingredients and boxes himself.
Because the side hustle has gotten so popular, Berman's had to nail the pizza making down to a science.
Once a week, he creates a giant batch of dough and sauce, then holds a lottery to pick 20 pizza receivers every Sunday.
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