Please Pass the Syrup—All 300 Gallons
by Jay Copp

In the pancake wars, a Kiwanis club in North Dakota is still the official champ. But the Lubbock Lions in Texas unofficially flipped more flapjacks and next year plan to earn back their top spot with Guinness World Records.

The Lubbock Lions Club served 30,724 pancakes at their pancake festival in 2002 to set the world record. The Fargo Kiwanis Club beat that mark in February when they served 34,818 pancakes. That achievement drew widespread publicity and the tongue-in-cheek ire of the Lubbock Lions.

“They awoke a sleeping giant,” says Greg Varoff, president of the Lubbock Lions. “They took our record but they won’t have it for long,” adds Lynnette Abbott, club secretary and the club’s office manager. (With 370 members, the club is the largest in North America.)

The Kiwanians may have moved into the top spot, but all is not exactly fair in the pancake wars.

The Fargo Kiwanians held their record-breaking event just two weeks before the Lubbock Lions would fire up their griddles—not enough time for the Lions to file the necessary paperwork with Guinness.

Also, as Varoff points out, the Kiwanians serve four pancakes on a plate and each pancake is only 5 ¼ inches in diameter. The Lions serve pancakes an inch or two bigger and they had set the world record serving two pancakes per plate.

So when the Lubbock Lions held their 56th annual Pancake Festival in February, they continued to serve the larger pancakes but they served three per plate. The results were, well, record-shattering. Serving 16,206 people, they unofficially topped Kiwanis with 48,618 pancakes served, though the total is certainly higher because some patrons came back for seconds.

Guinness requires the pancakes be served within an eight-hour period. The Lions’ pancake festival runs from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Even so, the Lions served 35,607 pancakes before 3 p.m., still edging the Kiwanians.

Not that anyone’s counting.

Next year Guinness will be counting. The club plans to bring in a Guinness official to certify their pancake-flipping prowess.

The club’s pancake festival is a huge undertaking. Besides Lions, the 900 volunteers include Boy Scouts and fraternity and sorority members from Texas Tech.

Feeding the crowd took 4,725 pounds of pancake mix, 105 gallons of margarine, 47,520 sausage links, 300 gallons of maple-flavored syrup, 16,500 cartons of milk and 10,758 cartons of orange drink. It was all-you-can-eat for $4.50 in advance and $5 at the door.

Competing with the Kiwanians is all in good fun, but the Lions don’t swim in pancake batter and dodge sausage sizzle for 13 hours just for kicks. The fund-raiser benefits 23 charities including Texas Lions Camp, Texas Boys Ranch, Adult Eyeglass Program, the Children’s Miracle Network, Boys Scouts, youth scholarships and Campaign SightFirst II.

Varoff says, like other Lions, he leaves the house shortly after 5 a.m. on pancake day and works at the festival until 9:30 p.m. “I don’t even like pancakes,” he says. “My mother served them all the time when I was a kid.”

But the flip side to the large scale of the Lions’ pancake festival is that other ventures pale in comparison. Two weeks after the Lions’ event Varoff worked a three-hour pancake fund-raiser at his church. “That was a walk in the park,” he says.