With the ringing of the pickle horn in Bagel Street Deli at 4 p.m. Friday, the 15th annual Pickle Fest was underway.
The event saw three rounds of pickle-eating, with six to 10 people per round making their way through as many pickles as possible.
“It is crazy fun,” said Kaitlyn Howard, a four-year employee of Bagel Street Deli. “It is a good way to celebrate a fest without making it about other things. It’s not about alcohol and anything else; it’s about having a good time.”
Since its start back in 1999, Pickle Fest has provided participants a way to get off the street and have a good time. But, unlike previous Pickle Fests, this year’s event asked for a $5 donation from all the contestants to go to charity.
To celebrate the 20 years the eatery has been open, employees thought donating to a good cause was a great way to mix things up this year. As they lovingly stated, the contestants on Friday were “comp‘eat’ing for a good cause.”
The person who ate the most pickles out of any of the day’s rounds decided the charity. That man was Kyle Suter, a 2010 alumnus who ate a record-breaking 10 pickles in 10 minutes and choose local charity Good Works to take the day’s earnings.
In addition to Suter, Adam Elliott, a 2008 alumnus and instructor of Military Science III for ROTC, and Keaton Vagedes, an undecided freshman, were the winners of the following rounds with six and eight pickles, respectively.
“It was a lot of fun,” Elliott said. “These are some great people, and it’s great that it’s going to charity this year.”
“It’s really high intensity, but low pressure,” said Howard, who was working her third Pickle Fest. “We really try to make it fun for our customers to come in and do something that is so completely weird but fun for them. It’s the one thing every year that we all love to work on more than anything else. I don’t think that anyone here would say that there is a fest that they like more than us.”
Also included in this year’s fest was the youngest contestant ever to participate in any Pickle Fest competition, Alana Patterson, a two-year-old who ate eight cut-up slices of pickles in 10 minutes.
“She’s been to the manager’s house several times, eating pickles, and they told us that she should enter,” said Steve Patterson, Alana’s father and an associate professor at Ohio University. “So we decided to let her join in the fun.”
When asked, Patterson, who is also a democratic city councilman, said it looked like Alana would likely return to crunch some more pickles next year.
wa054010@ohiou.edu
This article appeared in print under the headline "Pickle Fest supports charity."
