Disconnecting from your phone at dinner could earn you a free pizza at a Fresno eatery. Curry Pizza Company has a new “discount” at one of their locations where if your group locks up your phones — you can get a free pizza.

Folks at Curry Pizza Company love sharing their pizza with customers, but they’d love nothing more if people ate it without distractions.

It’s why the pizza shop implemented a “Talk to Each Other Discount” at their Willow and Nees avenues location. Implemented May 17, groups of at least four can lock up their phones in one of nine lockers to earn a free large pizza for their next visit, or to take home.

Co-owner Varinder Malhi thought of this after unplugging from his phone at home.

“Unless it rings, or it’s important for work — I’m just not on my phone,” said Malhi. “Going through Instagram, Facebook, none of that. Just trying to avoid it. So, my wife is not made at me anymore for that.”

Some other rules to get the free pizza: you have to eat at the restaurant, everyone in the group has to have a smart phone, and you can’t check your phone as long as you’re eating.

If you’re not up for another pizza, you can donate your freebie to the homeless. Curry Pizza Company already donates dozens of pizzas to the homeless in Downtown Fresno through the organization Khalsa Aid.

“We make 40-to-50 pizzas every other week from each [of our] locations,” Malhi said. “[Khalsa Aid] volunteers to serve it, we volunteer to make it.”

The goal is to eventually giveaway pizzas weekly. Malhi hopes the new discount helps reach that goal faster.

“You don’t need your phone, you could take a picture [of the pizza] afterward,” Malhi said with a chuckle.

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