'Everything went up': New Kingstown Fire Company cancels fall meat raffles due to rising prices (2024)

Canceled.

After running for about 10 to 12 years at New Kingstown, the raffle initially shut down around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, Chief Curtis Hall said. However, when the company went back to reevaluate for the fall, it was a different culprit that caused the cancellation: inflation.

“It’s not that we didn’t want to do the raffle itself, it’s just we would not be making as much money off of that raffle to make it really worthwhile investing the time in that to carry it out,” Hall said. “... When we started to have to pay a lot more money up for the products that we use, it does not make sense for us to try and conduct a fundraising effort when we’re not really raising funds; we’re just basically paying the bill, so to speak, for that event.”

Prior to the pandemic, New Kingstown’s raffles were held monthly from October through March and included a mixture of five items on a tray. Hall said this could include beef, chicken and seafood, as well as cheeses.

For each raffle, the company sold 90 tickets for $1 each, earning a total of $90 per raffle.

The Economic Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture reported summary findings in August that the Consumer Price Index for all food increased 1.1% from June to July, and all food prices were 10.9% higher than July of last year. The findings said that in 2020, the largest price increases were for meat categories, with beef and veal prices increasing by 9.6%, pork by 6.3% and poultry by 5.6%. Compared to 2020, no food categories experienced price decreases, according to the USDA.

As Hall put it, “everything went up.”

“As the cost of the meat products rose, your profit margin for that single round was lower,” he said. “You started getting up in the $70 [or] $75 range for that tray of meat, you’re only profiting $15, so that’s what we had to look at from that aspect, that it was not worth us investing the time or resources because we were going through the profit margin was so much smaller.”

Hall said it was typical for New Kingstown to offer a free meal for raffle participants at the drawing, along with opportunities to purchase tickets to play small games of chance. However, the smaller profit margin due to the increased cost of meat and seafood wouldn’t have made raffles a profitable event this fall, Hall said.

Though the department doesn’t plan to replace the fall fundraisers, he said the company plans to reevaluate in December to determine a plan for January through March.

“There’s still hope, but at this point we’re optimistic,” Hall said.

In the meantime, New Kingstown Fire Company’s fire tax collected from Silver Spring and Middlesex townships ensures that fundraising efforts are not crucial to the department’s operation.

Meat raffles are not unique to New Kingstown. Hall said they began at Carlisle Fire & Rescue Services and spread to other areas of the county from there.

Carlisle Fire & Rescue Chief Dan Grimes estimated that the raffles began before sometime before 2010. Like New Kingstown, the events stopped with the onset of COVID-19 and have not returned.

“Now with the inflation it’s really not cost effective,” Grimes said.

Friendship Hose Company No. 1 Inc. in Newville, however is continuing to host meat raffles, with the most recent event taking place Sept. 15 and the next drawing scheduled for Oct. 16.