Mountville drive-thru carnival food truck event this weekend to raise money for fire company; social distancing in place

The Mountville Days Carnival is always the biggest fundraiser of the year for Mountville Fire Company No. 1.

But the carnival had to be canceled — in its usual form — this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

So the fire company is trying something different in this age of face masks and social distancing: A drive-through food truck event in which all those attending will stay in their cars.

This Friday through Sunday, the normal weekend for the carnival, there will be fair food in the usual spot — Mountville’s Froelich Park — without the rides and games, but also without the large physical crowds.

“We’re using the park space where we would normally have rides and booths to just have food trucks,” Mountville Senior Firefighter Peter Taraborelli says.

“It is drive-through only,” Taraborelli says, adding that those attending must all stay in their cars.

The event offers nine food trucks selling carnival-style food, from funnel cakes to cheesesteaks and cotton candy to burgers, ice cream and deep-fried pickles.

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The crowds, the rides and the games like those at the Mountville Days Carnival in May 2019 will be misisng this year. The Mountville Fire Company will, instead, be operating a drive-through food truck event.
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Next to the park, Trinity United Church of Christ “has allowed us to use their parking lot ... as kind of a staging area to bring all the cars in and line them up.

“When you are parked and waiting, we’ll have our volunteers that will be handing you a menu, handing you a map and asking you if you’d like to purchase tickets” for the fire company’s annual 50-50 raffle — for which the winner will be drawn Saturday.

“We will be letting (the cars) into the food trucks area in an orderly fashion,” Taraborelli says. “I think we can do up to 10 cars (at a time) if they’re all at different booths.” The staging area can handle up to 200 cars, he adds.

Those attending the event will order, pay for and get their food from each vendor through their car windows.

“We’re following all CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) guidelines,” Taraborelli says. “We will have sanitizing stations for all our volunteers, we’ll have masks for all of our volunteers and, of course, we’ll be social distancing.

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“Anything that we have to hand to folks is for them to keep,” he says, including menus, maps and even the pens for filling out the raffle tickets.

“It’s going to be as hands-off as is humanly possible,” he says.

The menu

The nine trucks serving food for humans are Au-Sam’s Trolley Stop (hot dogs, chili, burgers, mac and cheese, shrimp and more), Donut Guys, Midway Pizza, Midway Cafe (cheese steaks and Italian sausage), Midway Munchies (deep-fried vegetables, pickles and cheese), Scoop O’ Dough (cookie dough and ice cream) and Auntie Anne’s Pretzels, along with a funnel cake truck that also serves deep-fried candy and cheesecake, and a cotton candy truck that also offers candy apples, corn dogs and popcorn.

One other food truck, Pet Wants, is selling a variety of pet treats, from chicken and venison jerky to green lamb tripe sticks.

The food vendors will donate 15% of whatever they make at the event to the fire company.

Largest fundraiser

In an average year, Taraborelli says, the Mountville carnival brings in between $8,000 and $12,000 for the fire company. Last year, the event raised $18,000, and the company was hoping to build on that success this year — until the pandemic happened.

The fire company is also selling more tickets for its 50-50 raffle this year than it did last year.

“We had 8,000 tickets printed,” Taraborelli says, of which ... about 90 to 95% have already been sold. So, whatever is left ... we plan on selling” at the event, to attendees in their cars waiting in the line to get into the food truck area.

While the fire company hasn’t ruled out rescheduling a full carnival in the fall — only if it’s safe to do so — Taraborelli says the logistics of scheduling with venues and companies providing the rides and food booths would make it difficult.

“We just hope that the community comes out to support us, and that we hopefully can make up the funding that we still need to operate our fire company,” Taraborelli says.

“Just be patient with us,” he asks those who’ll be waiting in their cars to get to the carnival food trucks this weekend.

“We’ll get you through. Just know that you’re supporting your local fire company.”