The giant raffle wheel stood before a crowd buzzing with anticipation. A sweepstakes of sorts was about to get underway.
At stake: Steak. And pork tenderloin. And sausage. And almost every other cut of meat imaginable.
Nearly 260 people sat shoulder-to-shoulder on a recent Saturday night at long tables inside V.F.W. Post 1419 in Hamburg, N.Y., a Buffalo suburb. They drank cheap beer from plastic cups, snacked on munchies and fingered the stacks of $1 bills they had brought to gamble. Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ La Vida Loca” blared over the speakers.
Hovering nearby were dozens of children in Hamburg Hawks hockey jerseys ready to take their money.
“It’s a meat raffle,” said Katie Bratek, who wore a red, white and blue T-shirt that read “Meat Raffle Queen.” She had wheeled out a cart of strip steaks, shrimp and ribs that were up for grabs. “You can get a rack of ribs for $2. It’s a deal, and who doesn’t love a deal?”
Meat raffles, unknown in most of the United States, are as embedded as snow and ice in the fabric of communities of the Great Lakes and Midwest, where they are formidable fund-raising tools for charities and, increasingly, youth sports organizations.
A meat raffle is pretty much what it sounds like: buying tickets for a chance to win some meat.
People are drawn to the events by their party-like atmosphere, county fair homeyness and, of course, the chance to win meat packaged and provided by a butcher or distributor.
“I just love meat raffles,” said Mike Schmitt, a 52-year-old landscaper and snowplow operator who was at the Hamburg V.F.W. “You’ve got all the beer you can drink, all the side prizes, and you can win meat. You don’t have to go to the grocery store. How can you go wrong with that?”
The meat raffle in Hamburg was for the benefit of the Hamburg Hawks Hockey Association, a local youth sports group. It was just one of about a dozen such raffles in the Buffalo area that weekend. (Mr. Schmitt, who brought a date to the Hawks raffle, had four on his calendar in the coming weeks.)
About a half-hour away the same night, Caitlynne Kesty was hosting a meat raffle at American Legion Post 622 in Williamsville, N.Y for the Amherst Lightning, a softball team of 11- and 12-year-old girls.
“Meat raffles blew up over the last few years,” said Ms. Kesty, a purchaser at a machine shop who figures she runs nearly 100 raffles a year with her father, Mark “The Meat Man” Demmin, through their side hustle, WNY Meat Raffles. “We do churches, charities, but the majority of them now are sports.”
Nearby, Lightning members acted as “runners,” peddling $2 and $3 tickets to the crowd of 120 people waving dollar bills in the air between raffle rounds.
“You’ve got to be rough,” Natalie Sheaks, 11, said of her job.
The Williamsville post is booked every Saturday through August for meat raffles, said Theresa English, the bar manager. All the raffles were being held for sports teams, from volleyball to soccer to baseball.
“The Girl Scouts do cookies, youth sports do meat raffles,” explained Lily Wozniak, the Amherst Lightning coach. “They’re very profitable.”
Google “fund-raising ideas for youth sports” and there are pages upon pages of suggestions like “hold a carwash,” “host a golf tournament,” “have a bake sale,” and “host a pancake breakfast.” The list goes on and on.
But most of these lists overlook what western New York residents have long known: Meat raffles bring home the bacon.
They can draw hundreds of people, and those who organize the raffles say the average amount of money raised can run from $5,000 to $15,000, depending on the turnout.
That is not small change at a time when half of all parents with children in youth sports report struggling to pay the cost of participating, according to a 2023 report by the Aspen Institute, a nonprofit research organization.
“It kills selling candy door to door,” said Erick Hansen, who advertises meat raffles on his website, meatraffles.com. “In one night you can make what you can make in three months of selling popcorn or cookie dough or whatever.”
To the uninitiated, the mere mention of a meat raffle raises eyebrows and unleashes a torrent of questions. A what raffle? What do you mean “meat?” Where does this meat come from? And people eat this meat?
Donna Quigley, who attended the Amherst Lightning raffle, recalled telling her work supervisor, who is based in Charleston, S.C., that she planned to attend a meat raffle over the weekend.
“He laughed out loud and said, ‘What’s a meat raffle?’” Ms. Quigley said. “I go, ‘Well, it’s a fund-raiser and they have a big wheel and then you win bacon, and people get so excited.”
The raffles vary in method but generally rely on a wheel with numbered slats that correspond to a winning ticket typically sold for $1 to $5. Wheels for the largest raffles have 120 to 240 slats.
The clack-clack-clack of the spinning wheel and the announcing of the winning number tends to elicit a Pavlovian response from the audience. People applaud, whoop and ring cowbells. Winners pump their fists in the air and run to claim their prizes like contestants on a television game show.
Except the prize isn’t a new car. It’s a shrink-wrapped bone-in pork butt.
“They call the number, and people get so excited they jump over the tables for a bag of hot dogs,” said Ms. English, the Post 622 bar manager.
While traditional youth sports fund-raising campaigns rely on the charity, or pity, of relatives and friends, it is not unusual for meat raffles to attract patrons with no affiliation to or interest in the cause.
They come for the meat, the free or discounted beer and the entertainment. It’s not unlike people for whom playing bingo is part of their social life.
The meat raffle’s origins are obscure. Some reports have linked them to food rationing during World War II, although references to meat raffles began appearing in Midwest newspapers around the turn of the last century.
At some point, they became custom in pockets in the middle of the country, particularly in Minnesota and Wisconsin, where a meat raffle can be found at one pub or another every night of the week. They began popping up in Buffalo about 20 years ago.
Depending on the state, meat raffles are subject to charitable gambling laws. In New York, for instance, regulations require organizations anticipating raffle proceeds of more than $5,000 to register with the state Gaming Commission.
Art Doldan, who runs meat raffles through his Buffalo business, ArtyParty716, called the growth he has seen in recent years “ridiculous.”
“People love them,” he said. “They bring their own food. Some of them dress up. Some of them have themes. It’s like a different tailgate at every table.”
Denise Naedele, the treasurer of the Hamburg Hawks Hockey Association, which serves about 600 youngsters, said the organization used to host a “Night at the Races” at a local horse track as its main fund-raising event.
The Hawks switched to meat raffles because of their potential to raise so much more money and bring people together. Ms. Naedele said the group’s last raffle raised $16,000, which was used in part to buy equipment and defray registration costs for needy families.
“At the end of the day,” she said, “people are waving dollar bills in the air, wearing chicken hats, making animal noises. It’s a fun night out.”
“And, sometimes, you win some meat.”
The post Like Bingo, but With Beef: Why Meat Raffles Are Blowing Up appeared first on New York Times.
