One Indiana pizza place wraps up the holiday season by giving back to all of its employees.
At Rockstar Pizza in Brownsburg, Indiana, owners Colby and Ron Mathews staff Christmas Day on a volunteer basis — but at the end of the day, whichever employees worked get to split the day's profits.
This year, seven employees staffed the pizzeria, and Colby said that each person took home more than $700 after their local community inundated the shop with orders.
"They always do well, but this year it really caught on, and they had a huge turnout this year," Colby told TODAY Food, explaining that the staff had originally planned to be open from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. "At 3:00, the phone started going crazy ... and finally, at 6:30 [the staff] called us and asked, 'Is there any way we can turn off the phones, because we have 60 orders to make.'
"At 6:30 they were like, 'We cannot accept any more orders.'"
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Colby said that she promotes the Christmas tradition on social media every year, but they've never seen a response like yesterday's.
"They make a lot more than I could ever bless them with as a bonus," she explained. "It ended up being a really good night."
She explained that she and her husband "basically donate" all the pizza supplies so that they don't take a dollar of the profits garnered on Christmas Day from the staff.
"They just take over the shop, and whatever money is made, it's divided between them," she said. "It's just a way to do more for them than we could otherwise. They worked hard, and they earned it. They earned every dollar of it, and for some of them, it's a very big deal and can make a big difference to make that amount of money in that short a time."
Colby chalked up the success of this year's Christmas sales to the growing profile of the pizzeria, which has thousands of followers on social media and has a wide, varied menu that attacts customers from all over the state.
"[The employees] always walk out of there happy, but this year was just really insane."