When Sookie Orth sat down to write her college essay last fall, something quickly came to mind. A pizza box. Orth, then a senior at Sequoyah School in Pasadena, began her draft with a declaration: 'I learned how to fold a pizza box at the age of nine.' She told the story of her years-long connection with Pizza of Venice in Altadena, where she often dined with her family as a little kid. One day, the manager invited her to assemble a box.
And she said she recently got a chance to pay it forward while working at Pizza of Venice: 'I taught a kid how to fold the box and I said, 'When you are old enough you can come get a job here.'' The box's provenance may be unknown to some observers, but it is hardly a mystery to the countless establishments that use it. The boxes come from Restaurant Depot, the wholesale food service supplier based in Whitestone, N.Y.