LAURINBURG — The Knights of Columbus held it’s last fish fry fundraiser for the year on Thursday with a slight change in the time for the event.
On Thursday crowds gathered at the St. Mary Catholic Church on South Main Street for both lunch and dinner. For the first time, the organization changed the dinner time from 5 to 7 p.m. to 4:30 to 6:30 p.m.
“We were noticing that we never had anyone come in after 6:30,” said Church member Jim Kirby. “So we decided to move it forward to see if it would help a little.”
Kirby added that it takes two weeks to start preparing for the fish fry, with inventory being taken two weeks out and ingredients ordered nine days out. All of the ingredients are bought in the county as well with Captain Larry’s providing the ingredients and the paper products coming from Scotland Wholesale.
“A lot of work goes into it,” Kirby said. “We do it about six times a year now and we used to do it about eight, but we’re all getting older and, like a lot of churches, we don’t have a lot of young members — and the young members we do have are parents and have to work.”
On average the fish fry sees about 800 plates served with a majority of those coming in being familiar faces.
“Most of the people who come in here don’t belong to the Catholic Church but they still enjoy coming out because it’s great fellowship,” Kirby said. “We get people from all over Scotland County who come even some from Fayetteville.”
Kirby added that even more plates have been sold through since the drive-thru was added three years ago.
“I’d say we have about 60% of our plates are sold through the drive-thru,” Kirby said. “Which is great because beforehand we could barely get everyone inside so it helped out a lot.”
He added that the fish fry wouldn’t happen without everyone from the church who comes together to work hard throughout the entire day. The next fish fry will be held sometime in January.
Reach Katelin Gandee at 910-506-3171 or at [email protected]
