EDITOR’S NOTE: Happy National Pizza Month! This October, we are celebrating America’s favorite food and the people who make it by featuring pizzerias that give back to their communities. To have your pizzeria included, email [email protected] and [email protected] with the subject line “Pizzeria Community Impact.”
Dayton’s Original Pizza Factory
Dayton, Ohio
pizzafactory.biz
Located a half-mile down the street from Stivers School for the Arts, Dayton’s Original Pizza Factory is just a quick walk from a real-life version of the 1980s movie Fame, according to pizzeria owner Bill Daniels. “It’s a really high-performing inner city high school-combination-junior high,” Daniels tells Pizza Today. He is such a big believer in the school, Daniels sends pizzas over for the school to sell by the slice as a fundraiser every afternoon.
“By the end of the year, it is enough money for them to have their prom, and they can charge a nominal fee to give a lot of kids their first formal social activity,” he says.
Daniels explains that Daybreak Dayton, an emergency shelter for homeless youth, used to be down the street from the restaurant, and he routinely would drop extra pizzas from lunch service at the facility. When he realized the residents probably didn’t get the same family pizza night their peers did, he offered to provide the non-profit group site with a monthly pizza party.
“We started doing that over 20 years ago, and I’ve been doing it ever since,” Daniels says. “We’ve been lucky enough to have been in business that long and have good fortune to be able to help out.”
Daniels says when Dayton’s Original Pizza Factory first opened, it was in a rough part of town, which taught him valuable lessons. “You realize there are thousands of great people in these neighborhoods and just a few knuckleheads running around,” he says. “So, you dig in by getting involved in the community.”
This started the pizzeria’s night buy-one-get-one-free program, which brought customers in on a slower night. Years later, the numbers for BOGO don’t make as much sense, but customers still tell him, “When times got tough for our family, we could still afford to have pizza on Mondays.”
At this point, Daniels says community involvement is “part of our DNA.” Pre-pandemic, the pizzeria would host field trips, which is how he met his wife. On another field trip for a vocational school, he met a student artist who created a coloring book based on the pizzeria tour.
Daniels’ wife has been a teacher for 35 years, so he knows how much of their own money educators spend buying supplies, funding activities and incentivizing students. If teachers want to reward their students for good behavior or grades with a pizza party, Dayton’s Original Pizza Factory will provide pizzas at half price.
The pizzeria also donates pizzas to Families of Addicts, an advocacy group for people dealing with addition and their families, as well as a local church.
Daniels says he started to realize his efforts were making a difference when the South Park Historic District started using the business as a selling point for the community. “It was incredibly flattering,” he says. “Every job, no matter what it is, it’s got that altruistic component in it. … It’s not that serious, making pizza. But on the other hand, I can make people’s day a little brighter.”
