PAKENHAM — The beautiful log pancake house at Fulton family’s maple sugarbush is a pancake house no more. The rustic dining facility that previously seated 120 will instead enter the coming 2022 season as a permanently expanded store featuring the family’s sweet products drawn from the 5,800- tap operation.
The owners of the popular agritourism business have pivoted away from serving up flapjacks because of continued uncertainty around indoor dining. They were caught by Premier Doug Ford’s first lockdown during the 2020 March break — the pancake house’s 51st season — and haven’t tried to run the restaurant since.
They wound up donating 700 pounds of frozen beans to two local foodbanks after the 2020 interruption.
“It’s a big change,” says Shirley Fulton, whose father was seen as “crazy” when he added the pancake house to the operation in 1969.
Now known as “Fulton’s Sugar Bush and Maple Shop,” they open for the 2022 season Feb. 18, through April 19. Since pandemic restrictions began, more than 10 per cent of Ontario restaurants permanently closed, says the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
