Medfield Lions: No Mother’s Day Pancake Breakfast this Year

Declining attendance over the years has led to the Medfield Lions Club’s decision not to hold its annual Mother’s Day Pancake Breakfast at the this year.

“Over the past several years, attendance at the breakfast has diminished from several hundred to less than two hundred,” said Medfield Lions president Steve Kramer. “The Lions conduct many fundraising and charity events during the year and with the available resources we have – we like to maximize the number of those who can take advantage of our events and programs. The breakfast requires substantial preparation and participation by members and we decided this year to devote the resources to other events in the spring, which will benefit the community and charities we support.”

Medfield Lion and Mother’s Day Pancake Breakfast coordinator, John Carey, said the drop in attendance over the past five years could be a result of the community offering a variety of ways to spend Mother’s Day.

“There are several local options for Mother’s Day brunch and the event had become no longer economically feasible for our breakfast caterer,” Carey said. catered the breakfast last year.

Over the past couple years, the Medfield Lions have looked at ways to expand the various fundraising and service activities for the community, according to Kramer. Some of the organization’s new initiatives include:

“We have added many programs this year,” Kramer said. “Including the Buddy Lions visitations to the , a bottle and can drive, which will start in the fall, open house programs for men and women, a Girl Scouts cooperative event and our community teens program doing fall cleanups for people in need in the community.”

Carey referred to the Medfield Lions’ most recent event – – as a program that was added with the subtraction of the pancake breakfast.

“You may have noted that [Sunday] the Medfield Lions joined with the Girl Scouts to host a ‘British Tea Party’ where a significant number of mothers participated with their daughters at the Center at Medfield,” Carey said. “The timing of this tea party event was positioned as an alternative to the traditional pancake breakfast.”

While proceeds from the annual breakfast – as with every Medfield Lions’ fundraiser – went to local charities, Kramer said the event rarely raised any funds.

“The [pancake breakfast] was never a fundraiser as it usually made enough to pay for the expenses of the event,” Kramer said. “It was more of a community gathering opportunity. The choice was made to use our resources to prevent programs that would involve more citizens.”

One fundraising aspect of the breakfast that will carry over into other events, according to Kramer, is the placemats that have been used as advertising space for local businesses to raise funds for local charities.

“Although the breakfast will not be held this year, we intend to use the placemats at several events over the course of the year, which will cumulatively provide as much or more exposure for those who donated advertisements on them,” Kramer said.

Kramer added the Lions’ major fundraising events remain the Christmas tree sales, its Medfield Day food booth, the Toll Booth and other events.

“These are in addition to our seniors Christmas party, blood drives, clothing drives and a March Madness event,” Kramer said. “Through the fundraisers we are able to give substantial, over $30,000 in charitable contributions to local organizations, people in need and Eye Research, our primary benefactor.”

To date, Kramer said the new programs and initiatives the Lions have brought to the community have “succeeded in achieving” the organization’s goals to provide more popular events to the community and raise more funds for the local charities mentioned above.

And while these new programs have been a success, Kramer recognizes the end of a longstanding town tradition.

“The Mothers' Day breakfast was a staple of the club for many years and used to be well attended until several years ago,” Kramer said. “It was popular for many local families who had been in Medfield for many years and was often attended by two or three generations in a family.”

But time changes everything and with a change in the town’s population over the years came a change in its interests.

"The traditional breakfast has not been as popular for those who have moved to Medfield,” Kramer said. “The bottom line is we try to adjust to the changing community to involve as many people, younger and older, as possible. The elimination of the Mothers' Day breakfast is an example of this adaptation. … Whatever resources we have, we are trying to put them to events that can be attended by more people.”