Gerald Davis was one happy fella during lunch Monday at Love’s Kitchen on 18th Avenue as he walked off with two big slices of pepperoni pizza courtesy of Little Caesars Love Kitchen.

    In fact, everyone was pretty much all smiles as they got their heaping slices of the hot pizzas.

    “It’s like a party out here,” said a smiling Fannie Johnson, the executive director of Love’s Kitchen. “This is a real nice break for us and for those we feed every day. They are loving it.”

    Inside the mobile pizzeria that is the Little Caesar Love Kitchen, employees of the two Little Caesar locations in Meridian, owned and operated by Ken and Dixie LaBruyere, were kept busy by the demand. The Little Caesar Love’s Kitchen is a mobile pizza parlor attached to a semi-truck driven by Jeff O’Meara. O’Meara said this is a way for the Little Caesars corporation to give back to the communities in which there are restaurant locations.

    “Whenever we are trying to schedule where we go we look at the communities to see if there is a place like Love’s Kitchen that help out the needy,” O’Meara said. “We want to come in and for a day give the people a break, a special meal.”

    O’Meara has been traveling across the country driving the big rig and admitted he has seen more of America in the three months he’s been doing this than in the 48 years previously.

    “It is so rewarding though,” O’Meara said. “Seeing the people smiling and eating up the pizza makes the long hours worth it.”

    Dixie LaBruyere said she was thrilled when they were contacted about adding Meridian onto the schedule.

    “We love Meridian. It is our home and where we make our living so to be a part of this is really fun,” Dixie LaBruyere said.

    The Little Caesars Love Kitchen has fed more than 2 million people in 48 states and Canada, according to a press release. It has responded to disasters such as the recent tornadoes in Oklahoma, the hurricanes in the East and on the Gulf Coast, the site of the World Trade Center attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and the 1995 Federal Building bombing in Oklahoma City. An estimated 50,000 Little Caesars franchise owners and employees have donated their time and product to the needy since the inception of the program in 1985.

    The big winners were those who stopped by, like Davis, who normally don’t get pizza for lunch.

    “I eat here at Love’s Kitchen all the time but this is the first time I’ve gotten fresh, hot pizza like this,” Davis said. “This is a treat, for sure.”