COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT
YEARS IN THE MAKING
Matador Pizza has been a staple within the community of Varsity for over 40 years.
Throughout these years Matador has always been looking for ways to get involved and give back to the community that has loved us for so long. Matador has long been involved with the community centres and schools within the surrounding area, often donating or delivering pizzas and other food items for events and fundraisers. From Vecova to working with Meals on Wheels, Matador has made sure to find ways to help out throughout the years and still continues to do so to this day.
Matador has also been adamant about sourcing our ingredients locally to help support other small businesses within Calgary. We start by sourcing our mushroom, pepperoni, salami, cheese, back bacon and steaks locally. We also source local in-season vegetables, beer, and flour.
We are also keen on trying to cut back on how much waste we produce. Our classic Matador pizza boxes are 100% recyclable, and we are sure to recycle all possible materials that come through our restaurant, including separating our biodegradable waste for proper disposal. We have currently also taken the initiative to switch from our styrofoam takeout containers to environmentally friendly, recyclable paper options.
PRESENT DAY MATADOR
Here at Matador, we strive to better ourselves and the surrounding community every day. We believe that even the smallest steps can add up to make a big difference.
We continue to remain heavily involved within the community and the general Northwest to this day, serving community centres, elementary, junior, and senior high schools, University Campuses and Hospitals. On top of all of this, we also lend our hand in helping with a multitude of fundraisers for teams on a yearly basis by dedicating evenings where a portion of pizza sales are donated to the team, or by offering door prizes for raffles. Our involvement within the community does not go unnoticed, and the gratefulness can be seen by the many thank you letters and photos that we receive from those we help out.
Matador also has partnerships with a few charities on food items within the restaurant. In house, we have our ‘Charity Pint’ partnership with Original 16, where 25 cents of every pint poured goes toward a different charity each year. In the past, the charities have included the Ronald McDonald House, and the Helping Families Handle Cancer Foundation. This year the donations go toward Brown Bagging for Calgary Kids. Our second partnership is more recent and is with Mealshare, a great not-for-profit that helps feed kids across Canada, you can read more about this partnership and the details below. We are incredibly happy to be a Mealshare partner and have already helped give over 400 meals within the first two months of being a part of it – and we think that is pretty great!
We try to find new ways each day to make changes that can have a positive impact on our community and city as a whole. One of our recent steps involved deciding to ditch the casual use of plastic straws within our restaurant. While eliminating the plastic straw entirely is nearly impossible, we are coming up with different ways we can cut back on the number of straws that get used and discarded on a day-to-day basis. We avoid the use of straws completely unless requested by a customer, and this cuts back the amount of plastic that is thrown out on a daily basis immensely.
MEALSHARE
Our Matador family is constantly looking for ways to continue with our community involvement and giving back to the city that has loved us all these years – we think we have found a great partnership that helps us accomplish just that!
We are very excited to announce our partnership with a fantastic non-profit called Mealshare!
Mealshare works with restaurants who are interested in fighting youth hunger in their local community and around the world. When you order a Mealshare branded menu item at our restaurant you’ll not only be treating yourself, but you’ll also be doing your good deed for the day. We’re so excited to be working with this great organization and to be providing meals through Brown Bagging for Calgary’s Kids, The Calgary Drop-in Centre and Save the Children Canada.
