Poster Says They Started Pulling Leftover Pizza From a Dumpster to Feed Homeless People — the Owner Noticed and Now Pays Them $300 a Month

In a Reddit post shared on r/WeirdSideHustles 17 hours before publication, one gets to see a picture of a cardboard box filled with slices of pizza. Some have pepperoni, and some have other toppings. "Trash pizza paid my bills," reads the header of the post.

The poster said that they were not sure if this even qualified as "weird," as the subreddit name entails, and then went on to share a story that got over 33,000 upvotes from people who admire the kind of work that the poster is doing. They said that they recently started getting paid to pick up some leftover pizza from a nearby pizza place.

However, the way that this side hustle came to be was rather compassionate, not money-minded. The poster said that they live "a few blocks from Roosevelt Row" in Phoenix, Arizona, and used to pass a little pizza place in the area all the time. But soon enough, they noticed that this pizza place generated so much waste that it used to throw away much of it after closing.

The poster then came up with the idea of "checking the dumpster and taking whatever was still wrapped or looked untouched." They used to put this salvaged food in clean boxes and, out of the goodness of their heart, went around to homeless people in the area and gave it away. They said they kept doing it because they 'hated seeing food go to waste.'

But one such time, the owner of the pizza place noticed the poster scouring the trash for leftovers and asked what he was doing there. Impressed with what was happening, the owner said that he was going to give him $25 to keep helping the community and people in need. As a result, the poster said that they now make $300 a month, which helps cover their bills.

As a gesture of kindness, the staff at the pizza place also keep their leftover pizza ready instead of throwing it in the trash anymore. So, the poster doesn't have to hunt for it like he used to.

Commenters were simply in awe of this "awesome gig." One replied that the OP had "turned dumpster diving into an official paid logistics route while keeping good food out of a landfill." They said that this was an "absolute triple win."

Several others praised the fact that while the poster was doing it out of the kindness of his heart, the owner didn't need to pay him to continue doing some charitable work. "Good of that guy to realise [sic] that altruism didn't take anything away from his business."

Another commenter said that they used to be a pizzeria manager and that there was an app called Too Good To Go, which was built for this exact purpose. However, it used to be priced at $5 for a "mystery box," where leftovers that were still edible used to be stuffed and delivered to people who could not afford to pay more.

Another commenter said that they still use this app and "frequently get fresh food rather than day-old food" through it.

Yet another commenter asked why they don't just make fewer pizzas since they have to throw so much away. To that, another commenter said it's "because the cost of not having pizza available has been determined to be higher than the cost of making fewer pizzas."

The Daily Dot was unable to independently verify the events described in this post. The details above reflect the account shared in r/WeirdSideHustles. The identities of the poster and the pizza shop owner have not been confirmed.