From the Colorado Pizza Festival

To the Colorado Pizza Community

September 6, 2026

To everyone who came to the Colorado Pizza Festival Saturday, to those who tried to come but couldn’t, and to the many who endured long lines to support the festival and the nonprofits it benefitted, thank you from the bottom of our hearts. ❤️🍕

Saturday was bigger, louder, crazier, and more meaningful than we ever imagined. At the center of it was something truly special: Our community showing up to help its neighbors. The Colorado Pizza Festival is a fundraiser for nonprofits working locally and nationally for the food insecure. 100% of the proceeds of the event will fund Slice Out Hunger, Longmont Food Rescue, Community Food Share, and Colorado Friendship, nonprofits who need our support to help our neighbors who don’t have guaranteed daily meals.

Many of you have reached out already about your experiences with the crowds that gathered prior to the event opening, which caused a slow entry process into a crowded festival. We appreciate you taking the time to share your experiences because we believe in this event and are committed to crowd management solutions for future festivals.

This year, as the gates of the festival opened at 1pm, there was a total of six city blocks of lines at our three entrances, each several people abreast. In the first 45 minutes of the fundraiser, we processed more than 4000 guests, which was greater than the total number of tickets sold for the event up to that morning. We had ticket caps in place and scrambled to adjust them several times Saturday on the fly, but it didn’t help and just made things more frustrating.

We want you to know we’ve read all your comments and messages, praise and criticism, and most importantly, suggestions. And we hear you, we’re listening, and we promise to use all the feedback to make the festival better. Thank you for all your great ideas, so many will find their way into next year’s festival.

We want to recognize and thank the hundreds of people who worked incredibly hard behind the scenes and throughout the festival to make yesterday happen. To every vendor who served thousands of people through the intense heat and lines and kept going even when things got difficult, thank you. To our staff, volunteers, partners, and everyone who spent countless hours setting up, cleaning up, solving problems, and doing everything they could to make the day special, we see you and we appreciate you more than we can say.

We’re proud of what we started, humbled by how big it became in its first year, and more committed than ever to making the Colorado Pizza Festival something this community can be proud of for years to come. Thank you for showing up. Thank you for caring. And thank you for being part of this with us. This community is something special.

With gratitude, the Colorado Pizza Festival team