Throughout the pandemic, a South Hero pizzeria has been letting customers who are experiencing financial hardship choose to pay less than full price for their food.
At Pan’s Pizza on Route 2, customers can opt to pay 75%, 50%, 25% or none of the regular cost of a meal based on their self-identified level of need. The restaurant calls these options the blue boat, yellow boat, orange boat or white boat, respectively.
Justine Zolotas, whose mother, Anne, opened Pan’s in 1998, said the restaurant created the pay-what-you-can model last March to give back to local residents.
“The community has been patronizing Pan’s Pizza for, what, 25 years almost?” she said. “We were like, this is something that we could do.”
Justine Zolotas said she and her brother, Alexander, were raised in the pizza business. For years, their mother ran pizza shops throughout Vermont together with their father, Pan. Their parents then opened their own shops — one of which was Pan’s Pizza.
Alexander Zolotas and Sani Pasagic, who is Justine Zolotas’ partner and a former co-owner of a Burlington pizzeria, bought Pan’s from Anne Zolotas last year.
The family is trying to get Anne Zolotas to retire, her daughter said, but she still insists on coming into the restaurant every night it’s open to help out.
“I am a constant presence on all angles as well, even though I have my own business,” Justine Zolotas said. “That’s just how family businesses are.”
By calling the different payment options boats, Zolotas said, customers are able to express their need without having to use language that is often stigmatized.
For instance, a customer can say “I’m in the orange boat,” which means that they or their family “has been seriously impacted by financial hardship due to Covid-19.”
“I really wanted to be able to have it implemented in a way that people didn’t have to feel that they were losing any dignity,” Zolotas said.
Most customers pay full price for their meals, she said, estimating that only about 100 people have used one of the boat options at some point during the pandemic.
The restaurant does, technically, have some restrictions on how customers can use the two largest discount options. For instance, someone using the 100% discount, or white boat, is limited to one large pizza per family or one medium pizza per person.
But Pan’s has never had to enforce those restrictions, Zolotas said, and they don’t feel as though anyone in the community has abused the pay-what-you-can system.
“We do use our discretion, and feel very lucky that we can just make that call in the moment,” she said. “And we always err on the side of generosity.”
In fact, many customers instead have chosen to “pay it forward” after learning about the boat system, Zolotas said. She recalled customers starting to pay extra for their meals, leading the restaurant to bring in more money than they could use themselves.
As a result, Pan’s started donating pizzas to local community organizations. With those pies included, Zolotas estimated the boat system has impacted some 500 people.
Jill Lowrey, who is a weekly customer at Pan’s, said she has heard people in line at the restaurant talk about “paying it forward.”
The South Hero resident said she is impressed the pizzeria has been able to succeed during the pandemic while also giving back to the community.
“I don’t know how many other places in Vermont are doing something like that,” she said. “I think that just speaks volumes to who they are and what they do.”
