Applebee’s in St. Louis Park will be hosting a pancake breakfast for Jack Jablonski from 6:30 a.m. until 10 a.m. on Jan. 21. All of the proceeds will be going directly to the Jack Jablonski Fund at Wells Fargo.

If pancakes aren’t enough to draw you to the scene, there will be much more going on during the three and a half hours. “The event will also include a raffle. A lot of items will be coming from Minnesota hockey team, and Goldy Gopher is going to be here entertaining. It is going to a big, exciting event,” said Todd Wetrosky, manager of St. Louis Park Applebee’s.

Raffle tickets will be sold with the collection of a phone number and email so that to win you don’t have to be present. The raffle will include many items from the Minnesota Gophers Hockey program along with other things. “We are very thankful the U of M for all the support,” said Wetrosky.

Fundraisers, t-shirt sales, chuck-a-puck, and pond hockey tournaments have all been planned to do to raise money for the Jablonski’s, but Applebee’s wanted to try something different. “We really want people in the community to know that we care about them. We value the relationship with the community, the schools, the boy scouts, and churches. We are a restaurant, we do food, so we thought about how we can help and decided to do pancakes,” said Wetrosky.

“Originally I was contacted by a friend of the family and they were looking for donations for food while the family is at the hospital. After that we proposed something bigger and we took it upon ourselves to promote it so the family could be with Jack and not have to work out the details,” said Wetosky.

The Applebee’s staff can see the need for the community to come together to continue the fundraising for the Jablonski’s and by making pancakes, they will be doing their part. “We see what all the kids at different schools are doing to come together and we just want to build on that. We see videos and we get inspired to do our part and if someone sees that from us and gets inspired, then great,” said Wetrosky.

Because of the nature of the accident, community events such as this have gotten a dramatic response. “We anticipate this being a big event because there is so much passion behind his story and we are looking forward to feeding as many people as we can,” said Wetrosky.