Pancake Breakfast Returns To Doylestown After COVID Shutdown

DOYLESTOWN, PA — The aroma of pancakes filled the air Saturday morning inside the Doylestown Fire Company No. 1 where hundreds sat down to the company’s first flapjack breakfast since 2019.

Joining this year’s griddle team, made up mostly of firefighters, were guest cooks State Senator Steve Santarsiero and State Rep. Tim Brennan. They spent a busy morning helping to serve the piping hot, golden brown pancakes to a line of hungry guests.

This year’s breakfast served more than 2,000 hungry people.

Members of the Doylestown Fire Company No. 1 Auxiliary at the raffle ticket table.

“It’s great to see everyone back again,” said auxiliary member LaFaun Reed gazing out over a hall filled with both young and old enjoying plates of pancakes and sausage links.

“Everyone who had been coming into the hall today has been happy and excited. The little ones are running all over the place because they are excited. They are in the firehouse,” she said. “It’s just great to see this back again.”

The breakfast not only delivers a delicious pancake meal, it’s also one of the social events of the year in Doylestown, said Reed.

(photo by Jeff Werner)

“I have seen people I haven’t seen for years,” said Reed. “I saw a former member today from Florida, one from Virginia and another from North Carolina. It’s like a big homecoming,” she said. “It’s a big deal. And it’s a lot of fun. We missed it when it was gone.”

So how many pancakes do they typically go through during one of their breakfasts? Any guesses?

Try between between 4,000 and 4500 pancakes along with a corresponding number of sausage links fresh from the Hatfield plant in nearby Montgomery County.

The auxiliary organizes the breakfast, but Reed is quick to point out that it takes the entire Fire Company to make it happen, from the volunteers flipping the pancakes to grilling the sausage and cleaning the grills at the end of the breakfast.

Firefighter Bill Price on griddle detail. (photo by Jeff Werner)

“For as long as I can remember they have held a pancake breakfast here and I’ve lived here for 65 years,” she said. “It’s important that we have days like this where we open up the firehouse because this is where our future firefighters are going to come from.

“People need to realize that this is our fire company and we need their help to continue. They need to be part of us,” she adds. “You don’t have to fight fires. You can be in the background helping out or as a member of the auxiliary.”