Slice Forward

Here is the whole idea. In Naples they have a small habit called the caffe sospeso - the suspended coffee. You buy two, drink one, and leave the other paid for. Later, someone who cannot spare the money asks the bar whether a coffee is waiting, and it is. No name is taken. No story is required. No one is asked to prove they are poor enough to deserve it. We would like to do that with pizza.

And not only pizza. A suspended meal might be a slice, a coffee, a loaf, a bowl of something hot; the place might be a pizzeria, a cafe, a bakery, a canteen. We speak in slices because that is our tongue and the slice is our symbol - but hunger does not check the menu, and neither do we. Any place that feeds people is welcome to keep a tally.

A suspended slice is exactly that: paid for today, eaten tomorrow by a stranger. The counter keeps the tally on a scrap of paper or a jar of tokens. A person who is hungry walks in and asks. That is the entire mechanism. There is no app, no card, no queue, and no sermon that comes with the slice.

The church runs the directory and never the till. We want to be plain about this, because it is the part people mistrust and they are right to. No money passes through Crustianity. We do not collect it, hold it, or forward it. Independent pizzerias run their own schemes, under their own local rules, with their own honest jar. What we keep is a list - who is doing this, and where - and a code of practice we ask them to hang by the counter. You can read that code further down this page; it is short, because a good rule usually is.

We are not asking you to believe anything. We are asking whether a hungry person can get a slice.

So the ask is small and it is honest. If you know a pizzeria that would do this well, tell us who to approach - we will do the approaching. If you run a pizzeria, come and join the table. Both forms are below, and a human reads every one.