Pancake Farm partners hang up their aprons

“I could go to the Pancake Farm by myself and not feel alone,” Cindy Potts said Saturday morning as she was waiting for the last Pancake Farm breakfast she would ever have that would be cooked by the restaurant’s current owners, Kathy Styer and Beth Buchter.

It was an especially poignant occasion for Potts because, for years, on her way to work in Lancaster, she has stopped at the Pancake Farm every morning for her two eggs and toast and the occasional side of bacon. She’s not sure what she’ll do for breakfast from now on, but she knows it won’t be the same.

It was just a few minutes after 5:15 a.m. when we talked to Potts, who was with a family group who were the first to be seated on the restaurant’s final day. She was with her husband, Rich, her aunt and uncle, Karla and Eddie Candelaria, and the Candelarias’ daughter, Nikki Baker and her husband Matt.

Kathy Styer, left, and Beth Buchter closed out their Pancake farm careers Saturday morning. The partners both started as mployees and have owned the business since 1992. The wooden letters and numbers on the counter were made by a faithful customer, Bruce Wolf, who died last week.

In the few minutes we chatted with Potts and her group, the dining room filled up with people who were obviously regulars, many of whom knew each other. It was a familial atmosphere, with everybody in one big room, where you couldn’t feel alone if you wanted to, with diners and staff cooperating to make a good breakfast a team effort.

The two key parts of the team weren’t on the floor, though. Styer and Buchter were in the kitchen, cooking. Buchter has been working at the Pancake Farm for 37 years, Styer for 36. In 1992, they became business partners, bought the place, lock, stock and barrel, and decided they were going to spend the rest of their careers in the kitchen, where the magic happens.

When the magic was over &tstr; for good &tstr; on Saturday, we stopped back to talk to Styer and Buchter about their day and their careers. They took their aprons off, sat at a table in the dining room and remembered how it was in the beginning, seven days a week, morning to night, then going to a breakfast-lunch schedule, then closing Mondays, and then a few years back, when the mortgage was finally, finally paid off, going to five days a week of 12-and-a-half-hour days.

It sounds daunting. “But we just we did it,” Styer said, “and we loved doing it. We chose this. It was our job, but it didn’t feel like a job.”

The doors opened for the last time at the Pancake Farm at 5:15 a.m. Saturday. By 5:30 a.m. the dining room was full.

Except for the last few years, Buchter said, it did start to feel like a job. It was maybe a point where they should take some time off. Go to their place at the beach for three or four days &tstr; even a week–instead of the day-and-half they’ve been able to get away. Go places. Do things. More family time. More time with their dogs. Styer and Buchter share their Lancaster home with three dogs. They pay people to look after their pets twice a day while they’re out here in Ephrata, cooking.

“The dogs are overjoyed when we finally get home at the end of the day,” Styer said. “And now we’ll just be there.”

The first customers through the Pancake Farm door Saturday morning were Rothsville’s Karla Candelaria, Left, and her family. Clockwise around the table were Karia’s husband, Eddit her niece Cincy Potts, her husband Rich Potts, her son-in-law Matt Baker and her daughter Nikki Baker. For years, Cindy Potts has topped for a Pancake Farm breakfast before heading to work in Lancaster.

Dogs are important. Buchter and Styer are co-founders of Leo’s Helping Paws, a nonprofit charity that has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to support the work of other nonprofit volunteer animal welfare groups. They plan to continue their work with the group and with other animal welfare organizations. On their first post-career Sunday, in fact, Dec.9, they plan to attend, would you believe, Pancakes for Pitties, a breakfast fundraiser for Pitties Love Peace, a nonprofit rescue group headquartered in Hershey.

They know their volunteer work will continue and possibly expand, they know they’ll enjoy their freedom, they know they’ll miss the work and the people. They don’t know what will happen to the restaurant and to the employees who were such an important part of the Pancake Farm family. The owners have had serious inquiries from potential buyers, but nothing is final, they said.
As our post-career conversation wound down, we talked about many more things than we have room to recount here–the phone rang.

It rang again.

Although Kathy Styer and Beth Buchter have hung up their aprons for the last time at the Pancake Farm, their animal assistance non-profit will continue to flourish. Leo’s Helping Paws held a final fundraiser Saturday morning.

And again.

“Do you have to get that?” we asked. Buchter shrugged, shook her head, “We’re closed,” she said.

“We’re REALLY closed!” Styer said and they both burst into laughter, good, hearty, hard-earned laughter. Well, ladies, you have reason to be jolly, and we know that your family of customers and staff, and the community you have served so well for nearly four decades, will miss you and wish you many, many happy years of adventures ahead.

Dick Wanner is a correspondent for The Ephrata Review.

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One Comment

1. 

   Stefanie

   December 6, 2018 at 2:23 pm

   The pancake breakfast for Pitties Love Peace is Saturday, not Sunday and they are based out of Elizabethtown not Hershey.

   Reply