A few years ago, there was grand opening of a new pizza place down the street from Rocky: MOD Pizza. MOD is a unique place where you create your own personal pizza and it is cooked in minutes, but it turns out that their restaurant is more than just a place to get lunch.

Ever since they opened the first MOD pizza back in 2008, they’ve been helping the community by spreading what they call “MODness.” Husband and wife, Scott and Ally Svenson started the company in their hometown of Seattle. They wanted to create a different kind of pizza place; one that could help the world around them. All of their franchises around the country have upheld this vision.

A couple weeks ago, during the week of Thanksgiving, MOD raised money for a charity to give back to the community. General Manager, Jason Bradley, at the MOD in Fort Collins explained what MOD did during this holiday, “The week of Thanksgiving, ever since 2008, we do something called ‘spreading modness week,’ where we give a donation of money to charity of choice. And the last few years it has been a charity called Generosity Feeds, which is a charity that helps kids who are in that hunger valley, who have a chance of not getting a meal.” Bradley explained, “Last year our goal was getting half a million meals and we got an email last week that said we almost reached a million meals. We’re hoping next year to make it to more than a million.”

This isn’t the only thing MOD does throughout the year. Bradley tries to keep it kid and school based when it comes to giving back to the community. He says they are near raising $5,000 this year for a variety of charities.

Bradley started working at a prior location as a crew member, but one of his friends told him about the opening here in Fort Collins and he ended up becoming the general manager. “If you look at my career, name a concept, I’ve probably worked for it. It just always ended up being about the same thing. The financials, the profit margin and labor–and we care about those things here, but that isn’t the end-all be-all. We care about taking care of people first. We are a ‘come as you are’ company. We don’t have a lot of rules about your past and appearance. We are here to give those people a second chance,” Bradley said proudly.

“We make pizza so we can serve people, called ‘spreading MODness.’ The pizza is almost secondary; we make a good pizza and we do it fast. We don’t shake you upside down for all the toppings, so we feel good about that piece, but why we do it is a platform for us to do what we want to do in the community. We feel by setting the example we’re setting, we can get other corporations to hop on board, and that we can help solve a lot of the issues that are out there,” he explained.

MOD is a great pizza place to get that perfect personalized pizza, but this company is more than just the pie. They care about the community they live in and are always trying to give back. They use the money they get to help others and they care about their employees as well. Next time you stop by this pizza place, remember that it’s not just about the pizza. We could all use a little more MODness.

Here’s their website.

Homepage 2021 Refresh