In 2013, Mason Wartman quit “the best job he ever had on Wall Street” and moved home to Philadelphia to open a pizza shop. A drastic change by anyone’s standards, Wartman’s decision drew national attention when his dollar-per-slice pizzeria — opened only months after he made the jump from suit and tie — went viral for its “pay it forward program,” which allowed customers to prepay for pizza to benefit the homeless. Quickly, Rosa’s Fresh Pizza became covered in colorful post-its, the currency of paid-forward pizza, with homeless customers grabbing the colorful notes off the wall to get a hot meal and a place to eat it. Rosa’s Fresh Pizza appeared on Upworthy, then all over the internet. Wartman even crossed the victory line and took his rightful place on Ellen’s couch, receiving accolades from the talk show host and her audience.
The rest, you would expect, is history. But it isn’t. According to Wartman–who spoke with us about his decision to start the business, the “Wall Street Man Makes Good” mythos, and life after Ellen–Rosa’s Fresh Pizza is still thriving. As Wartman points out, there’s lots of work to do after the viral attention dies down. That’s why he doesn’t leave the shop for speaking engagements. He’s still there, working behind the register almost day in and day out.
You recently wrote at length about your decision to give up your job on Wall Street and start Rosa’s. Can you tell me more about that choice?
I was working in New York doing finance stuff, and I had plateaued. I went to work on Wall Street in finance because I was really interested in that material. I really liked learning about stocks and money, which gets into global politics.
After about two or three years, I really wasn’t learning that much. I wanted to do something new and take on more responsibility, and I didn’t really have that option where I was. I had always wanted to own my own business, and I saw the dollar pizza stores throughout New York, and Manhattan especially, and I just thought it was a concept that could work back home in Philly.
How were the first couple of months?
The first couple of months, we didn’t have the pay it forward program in place. It was just me and some people showing up to make pizza by the slice for a dollar. We hit all the usual snags that new businesses hit. Personnel and product and trying to figure out how to make good food at a good price and keep people happy.
About three or four months after we opened, a person came in having read about us in the local news, and he read that we serve a lot of homeless people because they can afford our food, and we take great pride in being there for them. He offered to pre-purchase the next slice for somebody who didn’t have the full dollar. There’s a tradition in Italy where people can pre-purchase empty cups of coffee, and the café will put an empty cup on a shelf behind the register, and anyone can poke their head in and redeem it with complete dignity. I originally used Post-It notes to keep track of the slices, and that’s where the whole thing started.
Before that, were you giving away pizza anyway or giving people discounts? Was helping out the homeless always part of the initiative or something new?
I was working in finance in New York and not getting a whole lot out of it, and I read something in the Times where the owner of one of the dollar pizza slice places said, “We don’t make a ton of money, but we do get to help people out sometimes, and that’s a pretty good reason to show up to work.” I was like, “Oh, that’s pretty awesome.” It’s definitely a more noble business to be in, providing affordable food than working on Wall Street.
[In the first couple of months] If someone walked in short, sometimes we’d give it to them, depending on how close they were; 85 cents, yeah, sure don’t worry about it. If they had three nickels on them, probably not. We were struggling ourselves, and I wasn’t making any money in those months either. We weren’t giving it away.
You recently wrote that the drawback of Rosa’s going viral is that people think it’s one-in-a-million, when in reality we could all be doing something.
I still believe that. Nobody’s going to be going viral anytime soon for another dollar slice pizza shop that feeds the homeless, but the business model of Rosa’s is providing a basic necessity, something that everyone needs at a really good price, and letting other people buy it for people that otherwise can’t even afford that. That’s not applicable in every business but a lot of businesses. A lot. It should be a practice that should be mimicked in a lot of other places.
If somebody wanted advice on how to do that, what kind of advice would you give?
First, figure out how to make a really great product at a really affordable price and then just implement the system. The reason why this system works so well is because our pizza’s really good, and it’s really, really cheap. We don’t do anything super sexy in the regard of food. There’s a lot written about the cutting edge of food nowadays and restaurants nowadays–it’s like, farm to table, all natural, organic–which definitely has a place in the dialogue, but it’s not in helping people that are experiencing poverty. These are pricier items that are being sold and peddled.
If you can, figure out a way to make a bagel really affordable. I think it works with a lot of things that aren’t sexy, that you don’t really want, but that you really, really need. It’s a shame that some people wake up and they don’t know where these basic necessities are coming from.
I really like the saying, “don’t let perfection be the enemy of good.” If it’s good enough, grip it and rip it and try to get better. There are so many people out there that are trying to really do something amazing right from the rip, and I think that’s really tough to do. Rosa’s is something that I’m very proud of, but I look back at it two months, three months in–even four or five months after we had done a little bit of the pay it forward–and it still wasn’t anything too spectacular. Now, after about 11 months, a year, we’ve found our groove and it took off. I think that’s important to know.
One of the things you said is “don’t expect to go viral.” What was it like going viral? It sometimes feels like what happens now is somebody finds you, you get on the internet, everybody loves you, Ellen invites you on her show and gives you a gift, and then the public kind of says, “Okay, well, we’re done with this one.” What was the experience like for you?
That was actually something that I really was afraid of. I didn’t want to be like a washed up child star, and I still don’t want that. I think it could happen, but I worked really hard this past year to make sure everything was going smoothly and people were happy, so I think the business is on solid footing. There’s never going to be an experience like being on Ellen, and the Upworthy video that hit three months later. That was cool to see all the nice things; 50 million views, that’s crazy.
Everyone’s your best friend.
Exactly. You hear such nice things, and it’s great. I generally just take a much longer term perspective, so I’m like, wow, this is so much fun, I totally enjoyed it in the moment. My first focus every day, though, was still, wow, we’re busy: Let’s make sure that all the pizza’s still good; let me make sure my employees are doing the right thing; let me make sure all the customers are happy and the shop’s clean with all the traffic, and that the homeless people are being respectful and no issues arise there.
Looking back on it, there was a real risk of flying and dying, totally shooting up, having everybody come to the store, maybe entrusting it to some employees that don’t really know what they’re doing and then going off and doing speaking engagements or whatever, and coming back to find the place is a mess and we’re getting complaints, and it’s just not running very smoothly, and then the whole thing falls apart. I was very conscious of that possibility, and I really didn’t want that to happen.
Three months after we started the pay-it-forward program [before Ellen and Upworthy], we were written up in the daily news, which was a pretty big deal locally. They wrote up a really good piece about us, and it got us a ton of attention online and a ton of donations flowed in, and I’m like, “Holy shit, this is awesome.” Then, like all media attention does, it kind of petered out, but our homeless population still kept coming in, and donations were running low. That was really the time when I realized, wow, the media is a tool to be used. It’s a means to an end. Once you’re on Ellen, that’s not like, okay, you crossed the finish line, even though that was a totally awesome finish line to cross.
So what happened after? You said in 2015 that you feed about 40 homeless people a day.
Yeah, in 2015, but now it’s like 100.
How is it working? Do you have to factor that in daily now?
The Ellen show gave us $10,000 when I was on the show, and that’s a lot of money, which is awesome, but when you feed 100 homeless people a day and they each get two slices, that runs out pretty quickly. The weight, at this point, is on us to make sure that donations are coming in the door, that we’re pleasing our paying customers.
Life after Ellen is just focusing on getting back to business and trying to use that. I shamelessly promote the Ellen clips like no other. It’s a totally easy way to make any sort of intro regarding the business, so I totally use it.
Life after Ellen…life goes on honestly. My focus is always on two, three, four, five years, 10 years down the line. Will we still be serving homeless people? Will we still be helping to feed and clothe people in need? Hopefully we will be.
Was there ever any worry, especially after Ellen, that it would become a human zoo experience in terms of people coming to pay it forward and then gawk at the homeless people getting the food?
Okay, we’ve only had one experience like that, and that was right after Ellen. This woman comes in and she goes to Jeanine, the manager, and she’s like, “Where’s the homeless people? I want to give them these waters.” Jeanine’s like, “I’m not going to point out all the homeless people for you to go up to. Just leave the waters here. I will tell the homeless people as they come in,” and the woman started making a scene: “No, I want to make sure that they get the water.” We will make sure. Don’t worry about that.
We’ve only had one person who came in like, “Oh, is that a homeless? What’s this? Is this a homeless?” Pointing to the customer and yelling across the restaurant at the people in the kitchen, “Hey, is this a homeless, no? Is this one? Is this one?”
I think where the interactions between the two groups, homeless and non-homeless start, is when paying customers are talking about it in the store, explaining the post-its to their friends, and then a homeless person turns around and says, “Oh yeah, you donated, thank you very much. It really helps me out. I really like this place.” I think that’s where the connections are made.
So it’s a positive experience.
Yeah. We try to keep it as organic and as voluntary as possible. The cashier never, never asks “how much would you like to donate,” or “would you like to donate?” I instruct all the people working up front to try to sell as much food as possible–“Do you want a drink? Do you want some toppings? Do you want a side?”–but they never, never ask “oh, and do you want to donate?” That puts a little bit of guilt into it if they say no.
We have customers that come in that aren’t necessarily wealthy and just need cheap food, as well, so we try to keep it as judgment free, as egalitarian, as assumption-free as possible.
You also probably don’t question somebody grabbing a Post-It off the wall. You don’t say, “You’re sure you can’t afford this?”
The only extent that we do is if we don’t recognize them and they come up and they’re like, “Can I get free pizza?” and seem to not understand why they can get free pizza. We’re like, “It’s only for homeless people,” and they’re like, “Oh, I am homeless, I just heard about it,” or they’re like, “Oh, yeah, I’m not homeless, here, how much is it? A dollar? Yeah.”
Sometimes people come in and they’re just genuinely confused. Some people don’t really use the internet that much. They’re like, “I overheard somebody saying that they got free pizza here.” We explain to them how the program works, but we’re pretty careful to never be like, “Are you homeless?” We just talk about the program and let them make that judgment.
Are the Post-Its gone now or are they still there?
They’re just representative, symbolic of everybody’s kindness. We keep track in the register with a computer, and it’s connected to the cloud, and it’s much more secure than just having Post-It notes on the wall falling down, and sweeping them up. This way you don’t have to write a single Post-It for each slice. That’s pretty involved if you want to contribute a lot. For Ellen, I didn’t write 10,000 Post-It notes. That would have been insane.
And you’re still at the shop every day.
I work the shop–like I’m scheduled to have hours or make pizza or do the register–Friday, Monday, Tuesday, and half a day Wednesday and Saturday. I generally try to take Thursday and try to work on other stuff to build the business, whether it’s inventory or getting a second spot together, or working on partnerships with other companies. I try to have a total of two office days a week.
It sounds like really the best piece of advice that you’re giving me is, “don’t let the idea of perfection slow you down.”
I think that’s really important. There are so many examples of awesome companies giving back, and they’re all billion dollar companies. Even Tom’s is huge. People are always like, “Oh, Google’s doing this cool thing,” or, “Apple’s doing this cool thing, and I want to do a cool thing.” Well, Apple and Google didn’t really do very cool things to start, or at least they did very cool things and they didn’t get any attention for them. It wasn’t like “oh, you know what, in 20 years, I want to make a self-driving car, so I better start on this algorithm now.” No. They just do a lot of cool stuff. They got started doing one thing and they slowly built it.
Speaking of keeping it going: do you know that you can allocate 100 slices for homeless people a day, regardless of Post-Its?
I generally look at it like this: if we stop taking in dollars, stop taking donations, we have enough to last how long? We have enough to last a year, maybe two or so. The strength of this program is really that people don’t have to worry about food. As long as you’re in this area between 11 a.m. when we’re open and 8 p.m. when we close, you can probably get a slice of pizza. We don’t feed during the busiest times of our paying customers, but we feed 11 to 12, 2 to 3, and 6 to close. The odds are that the most you’ll have to do is wait an hour, maybe two. You just do something, come back, and get a slice. People really don’t have to worry about where their next meal is coming from.
Is there anything else that you’re doing?
We sell wintertime apparel, sweatshirts, hats, gloves, socks, basically just items that people don’t really think about to donate. We sell those things to paying customers and, for each one we sell, we donate an item to a local homeless organization, Broad Street Ministries.
We’re trying to build that up, as well. On the inside of the sweatshirt, if you go to our website, there’s a little tag on the inside of resources that homeless people can use so that they can always have some information to help them out in wintertime.
Do you ever end up hiring the people who’ve been customers? Or people who have come back whose life situations you’ve really seen changed?
We’ve seen a bunch of homeless people come back and they’re not homeless and they’re eating, and it’s just awesome. They come back, they’re employed, they’re buying their food, they’re donating. That’s a great feeling obviously.
I hire homeless people. A lot of the people that work in the kitchen at Rosa’s, I’ve gotten through a homeless resource organization. That’s probably the most rewarding aspect of Rosa’s.
I hire people through Back On My Feet. They make their clients get up real early and run and exercise, and you show up enough times and they provide you with resources. I actually needed somebody, so I just called them and I was like, “Hey, do you know of anybody that needs a job?” I hired my last two or three employees from them and they’re still here. I’d hire more, but they work out so well that I don’t need employees after I hire someone from Back On My Feet. I really like knowing that I’m giving an opportunity to someone who really needs it, who’s looking to make an honest difference in their life, and it’s really cool. They generally start out with a day or two, couple hours a week, and try to build them up to full time, as many hours as they can handle. It’s really awesome to see that person succeed.
What would you say makes for a successful entrepreneur?
I really think that it’s focus and persistence.
I think that there are a lot of great qualities that a lot of successful people have. A lot of them really like to read. A lot of them really like to travel or learn new things, or meet new people. I think the two characteristics that are most common in successful people is just focus and persistence. They focus on doing whatever they’re doing, one or two things, studying what they’re doing, studying what they’re studying, writing what they’re writing, exploring or learning or inventing whatever they’re doing, and it’s small and it’s simple and they really want to get it right, and they gradually make it work. They focus on that one thing, and there are always difficulties. They never get it right the first time, but they persist through it. If somebody described me as focused and persistent, I would be really, really flattered.
…Do you know when this will come out, about? Do you know how long it’ll be, or what kind of…Do I have to prepare for a lot of web traffic, or what?
You’re the only person I’ve talked to who’s like, “Listen, before this even gets out there, what do I need to do? How much should I prepare for?” I love that. I think you’re focused and persistent.
Thank you, oh, thank you so much.
Usually, I talk to entrepreneurs and they tell me to “follow your dreams, follow your heart,” and you’re like, “do I need to call up my web server?”
That’s me. Follow your dreams, but I think I’d be a little bit disingenuous. I’m like, “Yeah, my dream was to make pizza.” I wanted some independence, and I wanted to do something cool. My life is so insane nowadays.
In all seriousness, I’m actually a little bit surprised at how little fame has changed my day-to-day life. I don’t get recognized on the street or anything. In the shop, I’m a little bit of a rock star, but once I leave, nobody really cares. I think it’s a good thing, though. I’m glad it hasn’t been too crazy like that.
Mark Shrayber is senior Life writer at Uproxx. You can contact him directly on Twitter.
