“Hope your day is filled with reminders of how much you are loved” 💕
Our Valentine wish for the families staying at the Ronald McDonald House.
The only tradition we have on Valentines Day is bringing pizza for dinner to the Ronald McDonald House families. We were masked up again this year and handed them over to Gil at the side door. This guy was so excited to help deliver it for the 5th year in a row and that my friends is the sweetest Valentines gift.
Go Mazda "Local Legends"
Story time... early in December, we had a whole day power outage at our home (which is also our office) and our catalytic converter got stolen from our delivery van at our corporate kitchen. It wasn’t a great day.
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That evening I received an email from Go Mazda. In short it said that we were the recipient of their “Local Legends” giveaway program through Mazda Canada, a program to restore community spirit and help out local businesses across Canada. We are honoured. Total surprise! Thank you Go Mazda ❤️
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To say that turned around a not so great day is an understatement.
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We decided to use these funds to help us host our Customer Appreciation Week in January 2022 at all 4 LOVEPIZZA locations. We want to thank YOU for supporting us for the last 6 year, because that’s why we’re still here and growing.
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For every order that was placed with the code over that week, we donated a pair of warm socks to organizations in the communities we serve: The Bissell Centre in Edmonton, Pay Forward Kindness in Spruce Grove and The Leduc Hub in Leduc respectively. About 2,000 pizzas went out with that discount code last week. And this week we bought just over 800 pairs of socks to donate🧦 What a week!
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This LOVEPIZZA journey has been challenging, exhausting, fulfilling, joyful, delicious and emotional for Gavin and myself over the last 6 years. Thank you for being a part of it, enjoying our food, coming back, showing kindness to our franchisees and their teams & getting involved in our community initiatives.
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Thank you for being the best customers.
6th Annual Terra Centre Diaper Drive
Today was a big day.
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We loaded up “Vanny” (our 23ft delivery van), full of boxes… and boxes… and more boxes of diapers and delivered them to the Terra Centre 💚🧡
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Our 6th Annual Diaper Drive brought in 246 boxes of diapers. This is our BIGGEST donation yet and we are so thankful for YOU.
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This morning, on one of the hottest days in the city …ever (whoops), we unloaded all of those boxes and stacked them in the clothes closet at the Terra Centre’s Braemar School. We had a very important little helper with us - our son. He asked us a few weeks ago if he could deliver them with us this year. He unloaded, stacked, rolled full carts and chatted with the Terra staff with so much confidence, pride and love. To see your child take interest and pride in something that means so much to us was really special. He is our future and I want helping others, showing empathy and being kind to ooze out of him – and I saw all of that today. It was a prefect reminder of why we love to involve him in what we love. And why we partner with organizations like the Terra Centre that help so many young families thrive.
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Our friends at the Terra Centre were visibly elated with this donation today and expressed numerous times how many people a donation of this size can help. Fresh diapers = happy babies = happy parents.
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Thank you for getting involved in this year’s diaper drive, every single box makes a huge difference. We can’t wait to do it again next year ❤️🍕
Pizza Delivery Comic
A few months ago I had a phone call (and a lot of laughs) with a writer named Michael Hingston. He wanted to hear some stories about delivering pizza for a piece he was doing for the March Food Issue of Edify Edmonton .
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I had a lot to share 😂
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In this month’s Edify issue there is a four page comic with art by Kid Pixel that brought those stories to life on the page.
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Yes, pizza delivery is indeed an adventure. And yes, that is a man in his underwear.
Local Collab with Drift Food Truck & the Rainbow Society
We teamed up with our friends Kara and Nevin from Drift Food Truck to bring their famous pork belly sandwich to a LOVEPIZZA pizza – it is called “The Drifty” as a nod to their food truck.
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Creamy chili mayo, crunchy carrot and daikon, fresh cilantro, tangy hoisin glaze and crisp rich pork belly. AMAZING.
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$1 from each Drifty sold went directly to The Rainbow Society – an organization that has been granting wishes to children with life threatening or severe chronic illnesses in Alberta for 30 years. 🌈
We were able to donate $1036!
Ronald McDonald House Valentine's Day Drop 2021
This Valentines tradition looked and felt a lot different this year, but delivering pizzas for the families at the Ronald McDonald House tonight with this guy was as special as always.
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It was a front porch drop off in the cold, but we know all those pizzas warmed the hearts of some families that really need it.
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Hope you all had a wonderful day celebrating love of all kinds. ❤️
March 2020 - When everything was turned upside down.
On March 16th, our restaurants switched to “to-go” only and then shortly after that to just “curbside.” As the pandemic took news headlines by storm, our city felt apocalyptic. Like everyone, we didn’t know what was to come or how long it would last, but we knew we needed to keep making pizza.
On March 19th, we took our first batch of “support pizzas” to the University of Alberta hospital emergency room along with a thank you card. They were SO appreciative. SO appreciative, when we unloaded the pizzas and last night when we received about 20 messages on Instagram from nurses that said “this made my day” - well, that made our day. After that drop off, we also had many of our customers reach out and ask how they could get involved. So we added a button on our website where customers could buy a $5 support pizza to send to frontline workers. We sold over 2,300 in a few days. Over the next few months we worked hard to safely make, cook and deliver all of those pizzas to healthcare workers, first responders, grocery store workers, mental health organizations and anyone else who needed some extra love.
Here are some of the photos from those deliveries.
5th Annual Terra Centre Diaper Drive - June 2020
In 2020, our Diaper Drive shifted to strictly online to support the Terra Centre. We made it extra convenient for our customers - we did the diaper shopping!
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We look forward to our diaper drive every June and given the current situation, support for our local organizations is more important than ever. For all of us, normalcy and routine has been thrown out the window. Supports have had to change at the Terra Centre to meet the needs of these young families and babies during this time. Supplies are running low and babies still need diapers.
We “sold” 176 boxes of diapers on our website this year thanks to our AMAZING customers (you all are really the best). BUT we managed to buy 201 boxes with the money raised thanks to a few wicked sales we found. I love a good sale, but when it’s on diapers at the end of June… LOOK OUT! 🏃🏻♀️
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You know what that means? We reached our goal, during a global pandemic, you answered our call to help some really resilient young families in need at the Terra Centre.
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In previous years I’ve been famous for clapping, hugging and thanking you profusely for bringing diapers into the restaurants during the diaper drive. I missed that this year. But my eyes welled up with tears whenever a diaper drive donation notification came through my email. 💌
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The Terra Centre has numerous programs to help their participants succeed including high school completion at Braemar School while their children are cared for in the same building at Terra’s childcare facility, on site mental health services, cultural supports, housing & financial support and guidance, leadership coaching, and a community where young parents feel safe and respected. Terra also provides essential items such as diapers, wipes, formula, baby clothes through their “clothes closet” - free of charge for participants.
