Pizza clearly lends itself to good deeds because Short Road Pizza and Love Triangle are both Local Heroes – a series where we big up the people, small businesses and neighbourhood spots that make London great – already and now The Good Slice is joining the club. The Good Slice is a social enterprise that provides meals to those in need for every slice of Roman-style pizza they sell.
Founded by school friends Calum Wragg-Smith and Ed Kellard, The Good Slice was born during a trip to Malawi that the pair took after university, where they came across a nursery called Well-Wishes. “The children in the village walked many miles to school and most had empty tummies making it difficult to concentrate all day. We began to think of ways we could help. Along our journey we used traditional African ovens to make pizza. For the first time ever we made our own dough and cooked the first good slices. One evening whilst in our tent we came up with a concept. What if we could sell a pizza and use the profits to provide a meal to a child at Well-Wishes?” says Calum. “We arrived back to London, bought a wood-fired oven and learnt how to spin dough. That year we provided the entire nursery school with a nutritious meal every day. Test scores improved and our vision became a reality…. To date we have provided over 50,000 meals to those in need of good food.”
Now The Good Slice primarily runs as a delivery operation – you build a box of slices online, with varieties include the smoked mozzarella, onion jam & garlic roast potato Big Smoke and the aubergine, sesame slaw & sumac yoghurt Born in Africa, and then you heat them at home. For every purchase a meal is provided to those in need; currently The Good Slice is partnered with Glass Door Homeless Charity.
Cooking at the Glass Door shelter in West London on Christmas Eve 2019 was a particular highlight for Calum, “One guest shared a poem he’d written about life on the streets. Another sung a beautiful song in Arabic. Sharing food and stories with those that we are here to serve brings a great joy.”
The team has also slung slices at the likes of Glastonbury and Hay Festival, and traded at Flat Iron Square’s Winter Garden pop-up. Beyond that, Calum says, “We want to be the food company where people can Eat Good and Do Good. We’d like to build more slice stores across London and continue to develop our home delivery product.”
We want to share the love so Calum is shouting out Change Please, who make “life changing coffee by training those who have been on the streets to be baristas” and Lemonaid, who “creates social change drink by drink by donating a portion of their profits to communities all over the world. Their projects enables people to have access to independent, self-determined and sustainable livelihoods.”