Annual event brings together families, volunteers, and local businesses to support small shops during fair
By Maylia Baird
Guest Contributor
PASO ROBLES — Bright and early, the Paso Robles Downtown City Park was filled with tables and chairs, and volunteers working hard to make enough pancakes for the crowd of many families and local citizens who attended on Thursday, July 25.
“It’s a bigger group than usual,” said Patti Lucas, who helped run the event this year and who is also the California Mid-State Fair pageant coordinator. “Compared to last year, this year the numbers have already tripled.”
The purpose of this event is essentially to thank the community for enduring the traffic and chaos that — aside from all the fun — comes with the Mid-State Fair. It’s also to raise awareness to both residents and visitors that downtown is still here and how important it is to continue supporting Paso’s small businesses while the fair is going on.
“The purpose of this event is to bring the community together to [the] downtown park and to celebrate the partnership that the Mid-State Fair has with the downtown Paso Robles Main Street Association. It’s to give locals and folks coming into town a reason to come check out downtown while we have the fair going on,” says Jeffry Wiesinger, president of the Paso Robles Main Street Association and owner of local favorite downtown restaurant Jeffry’s Wine Country BBQ. “In years past, some folks kind of forget about downtown and we want to make sure that everybody in our community knows that we have great restaurants, shops, retail operations, the movie theater — that downtown Paso is the center of Paso Robles.”
In order to make this event happen it takes a lot of volunteers, and sponsors are the reason they are able to provide breakfast for so many people. The Mid-State Fair sponsored and provided all of the food needed for this event, and at 6:30 a.m., maintenance brought over all of the tables and chairs from the fair.
“It takes a lot of teamwork to make this happen,” Wiesinger said. “From the Board of Directors of the Paso Main Street Association, volunteers — it takes a lot of volunteer hours.”
Jordano’s Foodservice delivered all the materials and there was almost a thousand pounds of pancake mix, a couple hundred pounds of sausage, as well as eggs gifted to the public. Orange juice and coffee were also available. For a few days prior to the event, Jeffry’s generously provided storage at the restaurant for all of the food products. Attendees could even take tours around the park with the stage line as part of the event.
The Harris Stage Line, a business local to Paso, kindly volunteered its time to provide a unique horse-driven experience. The Mid-State Fair Pageant Queen, First Princess, and Second Princess were involved in this event as well, volunteering to serve the breakfast.
This event started 25 years ago, when Main Street Association Executive Director Norma Moye and then Mid-State Fair leader Randy Bernard came up with the idea. They came together with the goal of inspiring people to come downtown and support the local shops while the fair was going on. For the first time, however, the Paso Robles Main Street Association is not doing things the way they used to, where you had to pick up your free tickets from nearby merchants.This year you could simply get in line and enjoy the free breakfast in the park. The event used to be more centered around supporting the stores, but now it’s more of a community-based event, yet still with the goal of encouragingpeople to support our small businesses here downtown.
Check pasoroblesdowntown.org/ for more information and local event announcements.
Feature Image: A crowd estimated by one organizer as triple what it had last year gathered at Paso Robles Downtown Park on Thursday, July 25, for the annual pancake breakfast. Photo by Rick Evans
