This year’s event will be held Saturday, March 4th at Hudson High School from 8am to 12pm. Enjoy delicious Perkins pancakes with sausage donated by GFS, milk and juice provided by Hudson's Restaurant and Lake Erie Island Coffee from Caruso's while listening to wonderful music presented by students in grades 4-12. There will also be artwork displayed from students in every grade. Plus, there’s fun, games and face painting in the Game Room along with a pancake eating contest! Purchase your tickets for your chance to win the 50/50 raffle or one of our fantastic prize packages including an iPad Mini, gift cards to many Hudson restaurants, a Kalahari weekend getaway, and ice cream for a year.
The Annual Pancake Breakfast has grown immensely since it started in 1957 as a PTO sponsored fall fundraiser for the schools. By 1964, tickets were $1 for adults, and 50 cents for children. The next year, the PTO raised just over $1000 from the event. A decade later, the breakfast was moved from October to March of each year. In the mid-70s, the PTO’s take was about $2,000, and students participated in a pancake-eating contest to win tickets to see Alice Cooper or John Denver. Throughout the 1970’s, the PTO held raffles as part of the breakfast, with prizes such as bicycles and toys. By 1989, with tickets at $3 per adult, the raffle had grown to include a vacation getaway.
In 1993, the PTO Pancake Breakfast moved to the new Hudson High School, which had opened the previous year. By the mid-1990s, the Pancake Breakfast was generating more than $11,000 for the PTO from more than 3,000 tickets sold.
However, by the late 1990s, those numbers had dropped. Laura Gasbarro began co-chairing the breakfast and added the art show, expanded the entertainment options and sought more donations for the products used. “None of these areas were concentrated on prior to us co-chairing the event,” she says. “More parents began attending thanks to the new attractions, and “the event went from making $8,000 to an all-time high one year of $29,000.”
Gasborro adds that the breakfast provides "grants to classroom teachers for items, programs and new ideas that are not funded. It is great to know that so many Hudson kids have benefited from the profits of the breakfast."
Holding the breakfast in March, though, has its own challenges. Gasbarro remembers the year after they raised $29,000, “we had a snow storm. Not just a storm; this was a blizzard. The co-chairs [arrived] at 5:30 [and] we could hardly get to the high school. Good thing for pre-sale tickets!”
Bruce Hubach got involved in in 2001, just after being elected to the school board. He started in the kitchen as a “flipper" for about 6 years. After the 50th Pancake Breakfast, he took over as Chairman for the kitchen crew. Hubach remembers having a pancake eating-contest about 10 years ago, during the shift change in the kitchen. “Pancakes were coming right off the grills and onto the plates!”
When he started, pancake batter would be mixed as needed throughout the day. Today, Perkins Restaurant supplies the batter, and helps mix about 175 gallons the night before (this gives the batter time to rise). "Perkins is very particular about how the batter is made to ensure the same fantastic taste you get in the restaurant," Hubach says.
In recent years, he notes the PTO has offered gluten-free pancakes for customers with dietary restrictions.
“Gluten-free” wasn’t even on the radar back in 1976, when first-grade teacher Pat Armbruster got involved. She remembers a problem with lumpy pancake batter that year. “Although it was mixed following the directions, the batter was clogging the ‘bloppers,’ which drop out a measured volume of batter onto the grill. Everyone sprung into action and there were many attempts to solve the problem through experimentation, adjusting the mix with the batter at times being too thin and running out of the blopper onto the floor. After about an hour, the problem was resolved and we then worked frantically getting caught up in our pancake production so there would be enough for the crowds that were coming.”
Armbruster, who now works with REACH students in the Hudson Schools, says she misses "retired teachers who are no longer involved, and parents who I worked beside who have moved away as their children graduated from Hudson schools.” She says that sums up her favorite aspect of the breakfast: the people.
"Getting updates from older students that I have followed since they were very young elementary school students is a joyful experience. Watching former and current students performing in the orchestra, chorus or jazz band is a real treat for me. This yearly ritual feels like a family reunion.”
One of those students this year will be fifth-grader Sunita Bhatia. She volunteered as a server last year with her Girl Scout troop. “It was fun because we got our own pancakes afterward!” This year, she’s looking forward to performing with the East Woods Orchestra. “I'm excited because parents who come will get to hear songs from both of our school orchestras.”
Proceeds from the PTO Pancake Breakfast go right back to Hudson students. Since 2003, the PTO has given away $304,291 in grants and senior scholarships; 85 percent of that comes from the Pancake Breakfast. The PTO gratefully acknowledges this year's Executive Sponsors: Discovery Tours, The Hudson School of Music, Great Clips and Chervenic Realty. Come celebrate 60 years of the Pancake Breakfast!
Tickets and more information are at http://hudsonpto.org/pancake- breakfast.htm Presale tickets are $7 for adults, $5 for kids 12 and under, $8/$6 the day of the event, and volunteers are always needed to make this event a success.
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