PORT HADLOCK – Scott Browning can sell pizza, but the Ferino’s Pizzeria owner hasn’t been able to give much of it away.
For the past two and a half weeks, Browning has offered free pizza to those in need or just in low spirits at his place at 846 Nesses Corner Road.
“People are taken back by it,” said Browning, who has owned the pizza place for 14 years.
“They don’t see this kind of generosity.”
He suspects that because some people might think there is a catch, his charity effort is not having the effect he would like.
Since he began the offer this year, only about eight people have taken him up on the offer, good for a two-topping 12-inch pizza, although he’s offering up to 50 pizzas per day.
An advertisement Browning took out in the Port Townsend weekly Leader states his objective in clear terms:
“No strings attached! Free pizza for a deserving person. Please pick up at Ferino’s pizza for a neighbor who’s truly needy or who’s in real need of encouragement.”
This is the second year Browning has offered free pizza.
Last year, he gave away only about 30 pizzas over the month of January.
He does it after the Christmas holiday season, thinking there’s more need for charity then than right before Christmas, when giving is in full swing.
“Why not wait until the climactic depression after Christmas?” Browning said.
“I thought, I don’t really know how to get the pizzas to the needy and deserving people, but I know they’re there.”
The ways it works:
A person calls or comes in to Ferino’s Pizzeria and says they want a free pizza for someone they know.
That’s it.
“I didn’t do it for marketing,” Browning said.
Instead, he said he wants to move his personal and professional life from “success to significance.”
Because one person is expected to ask for the pizza for another person, Browning hoped the offer would stimulate community togetherness.
“We really do need ways to interact,” he said.
Browning told his staff not to interrogate the people who ask for the pizza.
Because of the no-questions-asked policy, Browning doesn’t know what reasons people may have for taking advantage of the deal.
But employee Mary Winans said she talked to one women who picked up a pizza and said it was for “her older neighbor.”
Those interested in ordering pizza, for themselves or for others, can go by the business or phone 360-385-0840.