MT. JULIET, Tenn. (WTVF) — A year ago, Mt. Juliet couple Zito and his wife Christin were touring the country for work.
"She was working red carpet awards and I was doing concerts and never made a cinnamon roll," said Zito.
But then COVID-19 happened and with that, the curtain closed on their careers.
"We were literally just trying to be creative to cover our groceries. We knew that we were going to be without income and that was really scary," said Christin. That's when they turned to baking cinnamon rolls, eventually selling them on Facebook, and then the next weekend was like 85 and then it kept going and then now we average over 1,200 cinnamon rolls every weekend."
Their small at-home operation is now appropriately named Rock N Rollz.
"We bake all the rolls here in our commercial kitchen space and then people come pick them up from us at any of our pop-up locations on the weekend," said Zito.
But as the business grew, so did the need for help and the couple knew just where to turn.
"There's about twelve other people now that help us on the weekends and every single one of them is someone that works in the entertainment industry that also lost their job because of COVID," he said.
Thursday, the couple has sold more than 26,000 rolls and for every roll sold 50 cents is donated to the nonprofit MusiCares.
"Because of that we've been able to donate more than $20,000 since we started in May," said Zito.
No surprise it's why their slogan is now, buy a "Roll save a roadie,"
Rock N Rollz also makes dog-friendly cinnamon rolls and a portion of those proceeds goes to Proverbs 12:10 Animal Rescue.
