UTAH’S MALAWI’S PIZZA TO PLANT FAKE TREE NEXT TO DOUBLE MATTRESS FIRM IN SIENNA PLANTATION 
Malawi’s Pizza (which currently has 3 locations sprinkled along a stretch of northern Utah between Salt Lake City and Provo) is planning the first of some 20 Houston-area locations, writes Katherine Feser. The fast-casual-with-fine-china chain’s main shtick, other than the life-size acacia tree model in each restaurant? The company says it donates nutritional supplements and allotments of grain to folks in Malawi in proportion to the number of pizzas sold each month. The first Houston spot is planned for 8731 Highway 6 Center (a new retail strip immediately west of the double Mattress Firm on Highway 6) in Missouri City.  Another location may be on the way to Central Square in Midtown; the company says it hopes to open 4 Houston-area locations by the end of 2017, while also expanding to Dallas and Virginia. [Houston Chronicle] Rendering of Highway 6 Center: Hunington Properties
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What a strange business concept: buy a pizza, have nutritional supplements donated in your name. What the what?
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I may be a purist but, when I think of having pizza, my first question is who makes a good pizza? Benefiting the people of Malawi (or name-your-own-foreign-nation) doesn’t even cross my mind during the pizza search. But, to each his own.
Pending Restaurant was so much better when it was still a trailer. Before they had to go bigtime, and change to pending.
Assuming it’s Mormon-owned since everything within 500 miles of Salt Lake City is…will they serve beer with the pizza? I have to have a cold one with my pie.
I’m seriously tired of these greeny weeny marketing ploys. I don’t give a rat’s ass if you’re donating something to someone (I’m sure it’s a tiny amount anyway), win me as a customer on quality of your product. From personal experience, the quality of said food is Inversely proportional to the amount of hype the sellers pitch. If it says ethically sourced, fair trade, sustainable, with 2% of profits gong to pregnant virgins in Zimbabwe … It means the recycled paper plate which the food is served on tastes better than the food itself.
From Utah and I’ve never heard about this place even through friends and family.
Just FYI on practical matters–a better description about locations would be that all 3 are in Utah County (or maybe ‘south of Salt Lake City’). The kink in I-15 just NW of the northern location is to navigate around a major ridgeline, and represents a massive psychological barrier.
I wonder the motivation for the combination of Utah Valley, Houston, DFW, and VA…
Why Malawi? I have high confidence that one of the founders of the company served an LDS church mission there, as I’ve personally seen this pattern a few times (serve a mission, then do nonprofit/NGO related work related to that country later on)