Pizza Shop Owner Giving Back After Fire Closes His Business
NEW CASTLE (KDKA) -- The owner of a pizza shop, whose business was destroyed when it caught fire, is giving back to a community who has supported him so much.
Fire ripped through the popular pizza shop in New Castle back on Nov. 8. The following morning, the owner of Augustine's Pizza received hugs from supporters and vowed to come back.
"My dad died at 35-years-old," Frank Augustine said at the time. "My brother died at 37-years-old. And we survived those, and we're going to get through this."
Two weeks later, he admits his timetable for re-opening has been pushed back.
"After talking to the insurance company, it's going to be six to nine months before we get back in this building," he said.
Augustine's parents opened up shop in 1961, and soon began making frozen pizzas.
"That's when we started to really grow," their son recalls. "And that's when they all quit their other jobs and we just worked making pizzas. The whole family. And my brother and I used to come down here and work. The best thing in the world was going to work with my dad."
Before the fire, they were making 10,000 frozen pizzas a week, with customers ranging from grocery stores to PNC Park.
But what to do about 1,800 frozen pizzas loaded onto the refrigerated truck before the fire broke out?
"We have so many different stores we sell them to," the owner says. "And we didn't want to say that, 'Ok, this store gets some, and the big stores, the little stores.' So my son, Frank J., came up with the idea we would sell them as a fundraiser, for $10 apiece, and give all the money to Toys for Tots."
They'll sell pizzas at Cascade Park in New Castle on Dec. 1, from 2 p.m. till 6 p.m., and then buy toys for local Toys for Tots locations.
"We're going to take them, probably in this truck, and drop them off at all three locations," he says.
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