Here's a swell idea. Open a pizza shop. Sell slices for a dollar. Let customers pay for more than one slice (or however many they actually eat), then give those slices to homeless people for free. Sweet idea, yeah?
That's what Mason Wartman did. The 27-year-old Philadelphian left his job on Wall Street to open Rosa's Fresh Pizza.
The model is pretty simple. Pay for your slice and however many you want to donate. For each donated slice, a Post-It is stuck on a wall. A homeless person comes in, takes a Post-It, trades it for a slice of pizza.
Here's Mason appearing on Ellen:
Obviously the feeding the hungry factor is a great one here, but as Mason points out, this model also treats the homeless customers with the same respect as any other customer. They aren't being handed leftovers waiting at the door, they aren't being shooed out, they're sitting and eating their pizza.
It's not a solution, sure, but it's a good step in the right direction.