New Blog Location

We have integrated our blog into our website now. Stop by www.roundtableonline.com for the latest information about Mount Vernon and Bellingham Round Table Pizza!

Travis Ketchum's Big Give (Former employees making a difference)

MyBigGive (www.mybiggive.com)

One of the pillars Round Table Pizza has formed itself on is giving back to the community. We have always spent the majority of our advertising funds on donations to the community, rather than things like print advertising and mailers. One of our former employee's, Travis Ketchum, has adopted this principle with his idea and website MyBigGive.

The idea of MyBigGive is pretty simple; many major brands (for example, Amazon.com) will offer people a commission to drive traffic to their website. What Travis is doing is allowing you, the consumer, to have 70% of this commission donated to a charity of your choice just by going through his website MyBigGive when you shop (I usually choose Livestrong).

The best part of MyBigGive is that it doesn't cost you anything extra. You get the same great low prices from your favorite brands, but now, just by going through www.mybiggive.com when you shop, you also get to support your favorite charity.

Travis has gotten MyBigGive off the ground mainly with just word of mouth. He has the support of several dozen brands already (Amazon.com, Newegg, North Face and Walmart are some examples) and many charities available for you to help support. Now Travis is trying to take MyBigGive to the next level. He has entered MyBigGive into Pepsi's "refresh everything" contest.

Pepsi's "refresh everything" contest awards grants to ideas just like MyBigGive. Travis is trying to win a $250,000 grant to help MyBigGive to take off. He needs your help though because the grants are awarded based on public voting. So if you have a few moments, please, Click Here to vote for MyBigGive.

Even without winning the grant, you can help MyBigGive take off simply by using it when you make your online purchases. It takes less than 1 minute to use, it doesn't cost you anything extra, and you get to support your choice of great causes. Why wouldn't you use MyBigGive?

So add www.mybiggive.com to your favorites, tell your friends about MyBigGive, help make a difference every time you shop (without costing you a dime extra)!

We here at Round Table are very proud of what Travis has already accomplished with MyBigGive and hope, with your help, he can make this idea bigger than even he could imagine.

Please note, that if he wins, none of the $250,000 grant will go to Travis or his salary and will all be utilized to help grow MyBigGive.

Twitter Retweet Contest

In an effort to increase our Twitter reach and as a thank you to our followers who help get the word out about Round Table, I am starting a contest for our Twitter followers. It is simple, all you have to do is Retweet our Twitter Specials to your friends, and you will be entered into a drawing to win a Free Large Pizza! I will randomly select someone for every special we Tweet out.

You must be one of our followers to participate, so tell your friends to follow us on Twitter to get the best deals on Round Table Pizza and their chance to win Free Pizza!

$7.99 Three-Course-Value Meal

You may have seen recent ads on TV from some of our competition lately talking about how they are facing the criticism about the quality of their pizza head on, trying to improve it. We have decided to do the same thing here at Round Table.

Unlike our competitors, the quality of our pizza has never been called into question. When I tell people I work for Round Table Pizza their reaction is always the same; "You guys have the BEST pizza, it's really expensive though." In the world of pizza-price-wars, where you can get any pizza for $10 and $6 hot-and-ready I can see where Round Table Pizza looks expensive in comparison.

When I hear the criticism that our pizza is really expensive, I've always responded with the following analogy. Comparing our pizza to the other "cheap" pizza places is like walking into a Red Robin and asking why their burgers cost so much more than a McDonald's cheeseburger.

Our competition just cannot compare to our level of service and our quality of product. With that said, Round Table Pizza is still a very affordable dinner option for you and your family. Especially now with our new special, the Three-Course-Value Meal.

The Three-Course-Value Meal is just $7.99 per person. Everyone receives;

-All-You-Can-Eat Salad Bar (served with Garlic Parmesan Twists)
-Pizza of your choice (up to 3 toppings or a specialty).
-Unlimited Cinnamon-Dessert-Twists.

The size of the pizza depends on how many people are in your party.
1 Guest - Personal Pizza
2 Guests - Small Pizza
3 Guests - Medium Pizza
4 Guests - Large Pizza
5 Guests - Extra Large Pizza

Got a family that can't decide on a pizza to share? All of you can get your own personals. Mix-and-match, share, don't share, it doesn't matter, it's still just $7.99 per person. We also have a kids option for $4.99 (includes a personal 1-topping, kids soda and unlimited dessert twist).

We feel this is one of the best dinner values out there. When compared to other sit-down restaurants, we are inexpensive without sacrificing quality. When compared to other pizza places, with everything that we are including in this deal for one low price, they can't touch us no matter how "cheap" they make their pizza.

The Three-Course-Value Meal is available every night starting at 4:00pm at both Mount Vernon and Bellingham. Come on in and see why the other guys just can't compare.

Love is in the air...a blog post from Pizza Mom

Our oldest son, Shawn, was married last August. He and his new bride Tara met while working at our Bellingham restaurant. That folks is what we call a “Round Table Romance”. We quickly discovered how much work it is to plan a wedding but we had a lot of fun doing it. Shawn thought since he and Tara met at Round Table they should have their rehearsal dinner there. We had a lot of out of town relatives and friends here for the wedding and it was nice to be able to include them in all the festivities that weekend. We actually do get a lot of reservations for rehearsal dinners. We offer a relaxed atmosphere and have plenty of room so that you can invite all of your future in-laws.

With the wedding still fresh in our minds and Valentine’s Day coming up this weekend I am feeling a bit like Cupid. I’m trying to remember all of the couples who worked for us that turned their Round Table Romance into a happy marriage.
Here is my list so far…

Pat & Julie
Pica & Guy
Brendan & Melissa
Brad & Robin
Tom & Venita
Rich & Jessica
Kelsey & Trisha
Chris & Anita
Jim & Nicole
Jeff & Taundra
Nick & Sara
Ryan & Yarrow

I hope all of our Round Table couples are as happy as this one.

Shawn & Tara

Happy Valentines Day to all you lovers out there. If you don’t want to deal with all the reservations and expensive dinners, light some candles and order pizza instead. We’ll even cut your pizza in a heart shape if you like.

Pizza Mom

Crew Creations - "Athena's Greek Pizza"

We are starting a new promotion at our Bellingham store called "Crew Creations." We have a creative group of employees up there and they have come up with some great ideas for some new and innovative pizzas we can add to our already stellar lineup. The first in what will be a rotating line of specials is Athena's Greek Pizza (created by Kevin Misiuda).

The Greek Pizza was born after the crew developed a red-pepper hummus to serve with pita-bread as a new appetizer for our Happy Hour special. It wasn't long before one of our shift supervisors, Kevin, and the rest of the crew started experimenting with the Hummus on pizza. The result was our new Greek Pizza.

The Greek pizza uses our red-pepper hummus as the sauce. We then combine our 3 cheese blend with feta and then add zucchini, red peppers, diced green olives, red onion, greek peppers and then top it with shredded parmesan cheese after it is cooked.

I got my first chance to sample this pizza a couple of weeks ago. I was actually very impressed with how flavorful this pizza is. The hummus and greek peppers add a subtle amount of spice, with the feta cheese adding a new dimension to our normal cheese blend. Combine that with our fresh, quality ingredients results in one great pizza.

Besides just the flavor of the pizza, there were two other things that impressed me about this pizza. The first is thanks to the strong flavor provided by the feta they were able to go a little bit lighter on the cheese than normal, helping making a very healthy pizza.

The second thing that also makes this a very healthy pizza is that fact it is actually a veggie pizza. Normally as a card-carrying carnivore I would realize right away that my pizza didn't have any meat on it. I managed to eat all of my pizza without even noticing the lack of meat. It just goes to show how good the flavor is on this pizza. (If you are one of those people who simply cannot eat their pizza without meat, feel free to add some chicken to it).

This is the first in what will be a rotating line of crew-created recipes. Right now you can get a Large Greek Pizza for just $16.99! If you like it enough, we will keep it around even after we get our next crew creation. Come in, give it a try and let us know what you think!

The Pepperoni Artisan

Last week I promised an update on an exciting new online feature, but like all projects it seems, we are running a little bit behind schedule. Hopefully I’ll have more to tell you next week.

Instead today I’m going to tell you about our Pepperoni Artisan Pizza. I’ve been working for Round Table for 12 years and since this is the family business I have been eating Round Table pizza my entire life. We’ve literally seen dozens of new pizzas throughout the years. Some have stuck around; most only last a “limited time.” I personally believe that the Pepperoni Artisan is one of the best new pizzas we have offered.

One of the reasons I really enjoy the Pepperoni Artisan is because it has a very different flavor profile than any of our other pizzas. It starts with its own special Artisan tomato sauce. Unlike our normal red pizza sauce, which has a spicy-zesty taste, this sauce is smoother and a little sweeter.

The next unique ingredient is the marinated-roasted tomatoes. Soaking in herbs and garlic these tomatoes have a strong distinct flavor that complements the sauce very well.

Lastly we have caramelized red onions. One of my favorite parts of the morning is when we are preparing the caramelized red onions because the entire kitchen is filled with the wonderful aroma while they cook. That same aroma translates to wonderful flavor on the Pepperoni Artisan.

So we take these three new ingredients combine it with pepperoni, some fresh mozzarella and garnish it with fresh basil after it’s cooked and we have a pizza with a much different flavor than anything else we have offered before. I know that onions and/or tomatoes can detour some people from trying this, but I really encourage you to give it a shot, because this pizza is very good and a nice change of pace. Here, I’ll even give you a coupon for it!

Click to get a coupon for a Large Pepperoni Artisan for $15.99

Hopefully I’ll have some information on our “exciting new online feature” next week, so keep checking in!