Restaurant working to help people buy school supplies

Dough is flying in the air, and each pizza is handmade to order.

Inside some boxes at Bocca Bistro in Boone, customers will find a little more than a warm pizza.

“Every day, I’m buying cards and every day we are randomly putting them in the boxes, and then we are shuffling up the boxes, so no one can see them until the pizza comes out of the oven,” Owner Marie Russo said.

Walmart gift cards are taped inside the boxes. The boxes are then shuffled around, so no one knows the card is inside until the pizza comes out of the oven.

“I loved Willy Wonka growing up, and I thought it would be like they got the golden ticket,” Russo said.

It’s something Russo says she came up with after looking at her grandkids’ school supply list.

“I was looking at copies of their school supply list where they wanted five things of paper, 100 pencils, two sets of headphones, and I thought how does the average family have multiple kids or even one kid and have a supply list dropped on them the week before school and have to come up with a couple hundred dollars in addition to clothes and sneakers and everything else that goes with back to school,” Russo said.

She said school supplies are expensive.

She said after Helene hit, she realized how lucky they were to keep the doors open.

“The water came up to our door. Walmart was gone. They were closed from September to December. We realized how fortunate we were. If it would have rained 10 more minutes, we would have been under water,” Russo said.

They opened the doors the night Helene hit, and the next few days handed out meals to linemen, first responders and people suffering in the area. She says people here still need help.

“There is still a huge need for Helene victims. People don’t understand that. People are still not in their houses. It’s hard,” Russo said.

She said even a gift card for school supplies could go a long way. It’s just like a quote from Willy Wonka, she says.

“One of my favorite sayings is, ‘So shines a good deed in a worry world,'” Russo said.

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