Every Super Bowl weekend, the West Bend Early Risers Kiwanis host their annual Soup-er Bowl Saturday soup and chili cook-off. After a year off for the pandemic, the event is back this year. It takes place Saturday, February 12th at Silverbrook Middle School in West Bend.
The event will features more than 30 competitors vying for the winning trophy!
Tickets are only $10 for adults, $9 for seniors (55+), $5 for kids 6-12, and kids 5 and under are free.
On this week's episode, West Bend's Mayor Chris Jenkins joins me to talk about the West Bend Early Risers Kiwanis and the Soup-er Bowl Saturday event.
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Uh, in a good way, not an enlarged heart way. But, uh, if you don't want to I'm just glad you're here right now. Today, I'm speaking with West Bend's Mayor, Chris Jenkins, about an event coming up this weekend, Saturday, February 12th at Silverbrook Middle School in West Bend. The event is called Super Bowl Saturday and it's hosted by the West Bend Early Risers Kiwanis, of which Mayor Jenkins is also the board secretary.
And with that, here's Fifteen Minutes on Super Bowl Saturday. With Mayor Jenkins on Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz.
Mayor Jenkins, thanks for joining me. Now let's talk a little bit first about Kiwanis and what it does, because there are a lot of great organizations in the area and I think it's important for people to know which ones, Uh, what, what they focus on and, and who's involved in all of that.
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We have a lot of great nonprofits in the city of West Bend that are supporting a lot of different causes. Um, so that's always great to see and support them. So I'm a part of, uh, West Bend Early Risers Kiwanis. I am currently the secretary. I was a past president and I've been involved in this organization for a number of years.
. It's been established since:
So that's the big, big thing. So a good example of, uh, some of the causes that we support here in the city of West Bend. We have the Kids Free Fishing Clinic that we do in April, that's a big, exciting event. We do our Duck Derby every year, that's a larger event that we do as well. And then we support programs like the West Bend Library Family Night, so across the street, whenever we do an exciting event and bring in, you know, magicians and musicians and all that good stuff, that's supported by Kiwanis, so that's pretty cool.
We help to raise money for iPads for the Focus on Autism project. We've raised money for the History Center, Washington County, Threshold, Musical Maskers does a youth program, so pretty much anything that has a program that also needs financial support to help kids in the community.
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So I joined Kiwanis, uh, because they were directly impacting some of the programs and things that I brought my own kids to. So I got invited, uh I don't know, it's gonna be seven years ago now, by a club member. I used to be working at Bebo Harris Bank, they stopped by my office, said, Hey, you'd make a great member.
I've seen you at some stuff. And I said, Sure, why not? I'll come check him out. And it, what's, what's great is that they definitely welcome, you know, newbies like me with open arms. And you built that, uh, that kind of sense of sorority, right? That community that we have. Amongst each other and it's a great place to network just like any other community group would be.
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Typically at our weekly meetings we have guest speakers that come in, so maybe you'll have to get yourself to come in and tell us a little bit about yourself and your career. And that's pretty cool, because then we have, you know, whether it's local celebrities like our police chief or myself, or otherwise we bring in other non profits and leaders just to learn more about them.
And then what's cool is that typically those groups then end up getting funding the next year, right? Because we've learned about them, we said, oh, this camp that's running on next year is really cool, we want to help invest in that. As I said, it's just a great experience to get to know your community a lot more, and do it with a group of people and the camaraderie that you get.
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Um, coming up, you have an event, which I assume is a fundraiser for you being able to support these great organizations, and that is your soup! Erbol Saturday. You got it.
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Yep. Every year. I think we're all kinda still miffed that the Packers aren't there, but Right, yes. That's okay. We'll celebrate anyway. And, you know, especially this year is really important because last year with COVID and the pandemic, we didn't get to do it. Um, so that really hurt our fundraising efforts pretty much for the whole next year.
And this is the largest fundraiser that we do every year. So, so really drawing in the community support is important for this, not only this event and our club, but then all the other events that we help sponsor too. So that's going on Saturday. February 12th from 11 to 2 at Silverbrook Middle School.
The event itself, uh, you know, we, we do it with many sponsors that are able to help support this event. We have some new sponsors this year, too, and people that have upped their wagers from the previous year. We have different sponsor levels, I won't get into that. Uh, but just some big names, uh, Chris, Quick Trip is a huge sponsor this year.
West Bend Mutual has always been great. And Wallace Lake Supper Cub, uh, those, those three are our platinum sponsors that are just really going above and beyond to help support this effort.
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Restaurants,
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Um, this year surprised us just 'cause how many people were beaten down our door 'cause they wanted to participate and they, they wanted to be the top chill. uh, Chili Soup. Right. Um, so we have thirty participants this year. I believe twenty eight of them are restaurants. We just have two that are not restaurants.
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In a good way, in a good way. We, if you have a fire department You want them to be the ones that always want to win.
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All right. And then obviously we tally these up at the end of a three hour event, and, you know, we determine a winner. We have a big trophy that we hand out, uh, and really these restaurants, especially those that have been around and been coming for years now, they take great pride in this. I mean, I still go to some restaurants where that trophy is proudly displayed.
Yes, yeah, I bet.
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We had a soup or a chili cook off here at Epic one day and this pre pandemic and we had been in the building in this building here next to the library for maybe. A six month, I think we moved in October, and this was the February, coming up to the Super Bowl right before that. And somebody started our kitchen on fire.
So it was like, we were in here, it was cold outside, and we all had to go outside because somebody left a crock pot on too high or something like that. And yeah, started the nice little kitchen fire. So, no damage. I thought you
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No, you should not. Well, the
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With all this, you can eat as much as you want. Get free dessert, which is great, too. You can get tickets in advance. You can get a 2 discount when you do that. Those are available at the Fox Brothers, Piggly Wiggly, Horicon Bank, or just really any Early Risers QAnus member like myself. I have tickets right here on hand that I can give ya.
Um, and happy to, to, to sell those out as much as possible.
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So
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There's gonna be little prizes associated with that. So it's a great place to kind of let your kids run, blow off steam. In addition, we do silent auctions and raffles. Our big prize every year is we have this giant flat screen TV that's been donated by PML. And so that's always been the big prize that somebody wants to win.
Cool different raffle prizes that you can get as well.
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That is happening on Saturday, February 12th from 11 a. m. till 2 p. m. at Silverbrook school. Mayor Jenkins, thank you for coming on the show today. You are welcome to come back and talk about some of the other great events that the West Bend Kiwanis Early Risers have going on throughout the year. I know that it's important to our community to help support these organizations that support our youth and And I appreciate all that you guys do.
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That won't get you the right place. I'm always looking for people, places and things in Washington County to talk about. And then we put them out on a Monday morning said midnight. Thank you for listening. Enjoy your chili. We'll talk to you next week, right here on 15 minutes of fuzz.
