Pulled Pork Pizza Raises Over $2,000 For Norwalk Charity

NORWALK, CT — Through the combined efforts of Letizia's Pizza and Bobby Q's Cue & Co, two Norwalk favorites were able to raise over $2,000 for a local charity by selling a BBQ Pulled Pork Pizza for $12 throughout the month of February.

That money will go toward Filling in the Blanks, a non-profit that helps fight childhood hunger by providing children in need with meals on the weekend.

Letizia's co-owner Danny Segers and Bobby Q's owner Bob LeRose joined Filling the Blanks co-founders Shawnee Knight and Tina Kramer at the non-profit's headquarters Tuesday afternoon to present them with a check for $2,052.

See also: 2 Norwalk Restaurants Collaborate On Pizza For Charity

"Filling in the Blanks was a perfect match for this," Segers said. "They’re feeding kids, we both make food, and it just seemed perfect. You’re helping people who can’t help themselves. It’s not the kids' faults that they can’t eat like the rest of us, so it just seemed like the perfect fit."

Segers is one of three owners at Letizia's, along with Dave Cook and founder Dennis Letizia. (To sign up for Norwalk breaking news alerts and more, click here.)

LeRose shared Segers' enthusiasm for helping local children through their donation.

"We liked this idea on a number of different levels," LeRose said. "Obviously it was a positive thing to do, the pizza was great and it was good publicity for everybody."

LeRose also spoke highly of the collaboration between Bobby Q's and Letizia's, which he said was a very easy partnership, especially since he and Seger had not met each other prior to this collaboration.

The special pies were sold at Letizia's for only one month, beginning Feb. 3 and ending Sunday. The popular new menu item was a true collaboration between both parties, with LeRose providing the pork and sauce and Letizia's turning it into a ready-to-eat pizza.

"We were really excited to partner with two great restaurants in the community," Knight said. "We feed kids, they're feeding people; we’re all feeding everybody."

The Filling in the Blanks team also benefited from the amount of publicity both restaurants were able to give them.

"It’s brought a lot of new volunteers to us as well, because they have posters up at both restaurants" Kramer said, "so it’s created kind of an additional impact for us with volunteers too."

According to Kramer, Filling in the Blanks was founded in 2013 and moved to Norwalk two years ago, a move she said created a lot of community support and helped them grow.

They also now have a warehouse where they can store the food they collect, which is then put into a pack almost resembling a gift bag and distributed to kids who receive free lunch at school and may not be able to feed themselves on the weekend.

"When we started this, we wanted to do something to help out the community and also get our kids involved," Kramer said, "so this was an easy concept; that their peers are not eating on the weekends."

Filling in the Blanks currently serves 1,500 kids weekly in Norwalk, Stamford and Greenwich, as well as Bedford, N.Y. According to Kramer, 400 of those kids are in Norwalk.

"In the beginning when we first talked about this and decided to do it for charity, a lot of the stuff we’ve done at Letizia's in the past has been with a national charity," Segers said. "It was important to us this time to find one that was local."

Anyone who wishes to donate to Filling in the Blanks can still do so on their website. The team is currently looking to purchase a new 16-foot box truck, for which they still need to raise $1,500.

Letizia's Pizza is located at 666 Main Avenue in Norwalk; check out their website here. Bobby Q's Cue & Co is located at 11 Merwin Street in Norwalk; check out their website here.