It’s remarkable how a simple pulley can change the way we think about pizza and life.
Ben Berman, a 27 year old graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, slings personal pies at home and shares them for free with a unique pizza delivery method. He lowers the pizza out of his second-story apartment in a cardboard box with a pulley made of string.
"I realized I could make people smile by dropping slices of pizza out my window, and that was really the original idea," he said in an interview this week on “CBS This Morning: Saturday.”
Last year, Ben's grandmother passed away from COVID-19, and his grandfather was hospitalized from the disease. “It was harder than anyone, I think, can imagine,” he said. After, he decided to use pizza to connect with friends and strangers and founded Good Pizza PHL.
When he can, Ben bakes around 20 pies a week and gives them away by lottery. The lucky winners visit Ben's home for the special pizza delivery and say hello from afar. Ben prepares the pizza with fermented dough, homemade tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella from Di Bruno Bros, and a steel baking pan (like Philly's pizza wizard, chef Marc Vetri.)
When Barstool’s founder Dave Portnoy reviewed Good Pizza, giving it a 7.9 out of 10, demand exploded. In December, over 900 people signed up in one week. Even some NBA players, Tobias Harris and Matthise Thybulle, from the 76ers, stopped by and pledged $5,000 in matched donations.
So far, Ben has produced over 500 pies from scratch and raised thousands of dollars in donations from all over the world – all for local nonprofits.