That’s a Fact : The Right Answer, Time and Place Can Be Worth A Free Slice of Pizza

Thirteen-year-old Derek Eastman burst excitedly into the Pizza Pub and Pastry in San Clemente with a head full of facts that were as good as gold.

“Did you know that ionization in a sandstorm creates lightning?” he asked Don the Pizza Man, then quickly followed with: “And a laser beam can cut through a diamond in a one-thousandth of a second?”

Those two tidbits of classroom learning, although unverifiable at the moment, earned Derek a free slice of hot pepperoni pizza. And as other students from the Shorecliffs Junior High School searched their memories for a bit of knowledge gleaned from their long day at school, Derek munched happily away.

“Thanks Don,” Derek cried out. “I’ll have a new one tomorrow.”

Welcome to Don Plaut’s “Thought for Food” program, a kind of daily kid klatsch that he invented as a way to build self-esteem in neighborhood children and to help show them that what they have learned in school is valuable and worth sharing.

A long-time San Clemente restaurant worker and former summer camp counselor, Plaut started his pizza give-away on a whim. It costs him a few dollars a day during a time when he normally has little business, but Plaut says he has seen priceless results in the kids.

Each day after being dropped off at the nearby bus stop, between 10 and 20 neighborhood kids belly up to Plaut’s counter to barter away a newly learned snippet of knowledge for a slice of pizza or pastry.

These are not your average, run-of-the-mill bookworms who gladly shake down Plaut for a free afternoon snack, mind you. These kids, ages 12 to 14 for the most part, come into the shop carrying skateboards and wearing T-shirts emblazoned with heavy metal slogans or surfboard logos.

Most end up surprised to learn that with a little bit of incentive, they can recall a wealth of information they didn’t know they retained.

Take seventh-grader Tim Martinez for instance. Following his friend, Derek, into the pizza shop, Tim stood silent at the counter for a minute. Then as his face brightened, he formed his right thumb and forefinger into an L shape and held up his hand for his friends and Plaut to see.

“A right angle is an angle that measures 90 degrees,” Tim told Plaut, who frowned a bit, then with feigned reluctance, handed over a steaming slice.

“That was a pretty basic,” Plaut chided Tim before forking over the food. Part of his routine was to pretend that he couldn’t be taken so easily. “You gotta come up with a better one tomorrow, though.”

Tim, a veteran of the nine-month-old program, knew he was in for a ribbing by offering Plaut that small lesson in basic geometry.

“You have to think hard for the best things to tell him before you get your pizza,” Tim said later as he clowned with his classmates.

Plaut, a psychology major, has worked in a variety of South County restaurants for the past 12 years. But last summer, he quit his job with the Fisherman’s Restaurant on the San Clemente Pier to open his own pizza shop.

Plaut did not dream, however, that his best advertising campaign would come from an off-the-cuff idea that hit him one hot afternoon in September.

“I was out in front and saw some of the kids walking home after school,” Plaut said. “I said, ‘So what did you learn today?’ ”

The kids, clutching their school books, simply shrugged and walked on past to their houses, he said.

He repeated the question the next day, with the same result.

On the third day, some kids walked past, and, noticing that he did not ask what they had learned, approached him instead. “One kid said to me, ‘Aren’t you going to ask us what we learned today?’ ” Plaut said. “This time I shrugged and told them that if they didn’t want to tell me, then I didn’t want to know.”

The following day, Plaut came up with the Thought for Food idea.

This time, as the flock of kids passed his shop, he stopped them and made his offer: “I told them that if they could tell me one thing they learned at school, then they’d get a piece of pizza for free.”

The kids were incredulous. “They asked, ‘You mean all we have to do is tell you one thing, and we get pizza?’ ” Plaut related.

Plaut said he didn’t start the program to attract customers but to interrupt the slow part of the day and befriend the neighborhood kids who would undoubtedly become his best customers.

Many of the youngsters who come into the shop have no one to go home to after school since their parents work, Plaut said. The Thought For Food program not only gives the kids a safe place to gather after school but gives them a little nutrition as well.

“A lot of the times, the parents have no time, unfortunately,” Plaut said. “When they (parents) come home and they are tired, the last thing they want to know is what their kids learned at school.”

With summer around the corner, Plaut said that he and local artist Paul Gavin, who owns a nearby studio, are planning to start a daily art class to augment the Thought for Food program.

While her friends watched, 12-year-old Megan Daims ticked off the names of the planets on her fingers. After she erroneously included the Sun, her friend, Amber Hall, turned around sharply.

“That’s no planet!” Amber pointed out.

“Oh, yeah,” Megan admitted and then successfully completed the list for a piece of pizza.

Seconds later, Ryan Devitt stepped up to the counter and confidently announced that Henry VIII and Elizabeth I were both members of England’s Tudor family, a fact that he learned from the day’s social studies class.

“I really didn’t know that this program would take off like it did,” Plaut said, adding that he gives away two to three pizzas a day--costing him only a few dollars in supplies and an hour of his time during the otherwise slowest part of his business day.

“The investment is really minor,” Plaut explained. “If I can save one kid and teach him a little common sense, make him use his head, then I’d give away 20 pizzas.”