By Bailey Borkowski
The Ramspondents
After almost a week of SNAP benefits being paused, restaurants across the country have been offering free food for people who lost their benefits. Here in Fort Collins, Krazy Karl’s has joined the restaurants that are giving back to the community.
“I think we are doing like 100 to 175 per day, per location. We are kind of changing things up a bit. Just because we’re getting so many each day for like larger families and stuff for larger families we’re offering a large pizza for them to share instead of just a small one for each individual to help our staff handle the influx of orders.”
“We ran back and forth between just offering a single slice of pizza, versus a cheese bread, versus a whole pizza, and we just landed on that. That was going to be the best thing so that people can have some leftovers,” said Kortney Zapp, the hospitality manager and event coordinator at Krazy Karl’s.
Krazy Karl’s isn’t just offering people with SNAP benefits free pizza but people who were affected by the government shutdown.
“Initially we started with just SNAP and it was anyone who has their snap or EBT card to bring that in and get a personal pizza and we’re doing a small either cheese or one topping pizza,” Zapp said. “Now we’ve opened it up to those who have been furloughed as well with the government shutdown.”
Both restaurant locations, in Fort Collins and Loveland, are offering this promotion. Although Krazy Karl’s started this later than most restaurants they have had an outstanding response from the community.
“I think we are doing like 100 to 175 per day, per location,” Zapp said. “We are kind of changing things up a bit. Just because we’re getting so many each day for like larger families and stuff for larger families we’re offering a large pizza for them to share instead of just a small one for each individual to help our staff handle the influx of orders.”
With this large turnout of people coming in for pizza Krazy Karl’s has had to increase their staff. With this increase Krazy Karl’s decided to start a GoFundMe to help them pay for the extra costs in labor.
“We were told by so many people, mostly in the Fort Collins community, to open it up to the public to have other people help us,” Zapp said. “The customer product isn’t a significant amount, it’s the labor for staff and the hours and time that they’re putting into things that kind of prompted us to do this.”
With over $1,000 raised, Krazy Karl’s is committed to offering free pizzas to the community until SNAP benefits are restored and the government reopens, a process that is already underway.
“It’s something that people enjoy and makes people happy. It’s just a nice hot pizza,” Zapp said.
Bailey Borkowski is the station manager at CTV 11 and a journalism student at Colorado State University who focuses on reporting the full and accurate truth and keeping the Fort Collins community informed.