It was that time of year again for the Chickie’s & Pete’s franchise in Bordentown to cook up its famous crabfries for a good cause on July 13.
In honor of National French Fry Day, Bordentown teamed up with its fellow Chickie’s & Pete’s franchises in the surrounding areas to conduct its seventh annual National Crabfries Day, where 20% of sales of all crabfries sold were donated to help families of fallen police officers.
Crabfries are crinkle-cut French fries sprinkled with crabby spices and served with a creamy cheese dipping sauce.
Regular crabfries, crabby sweets, combo fries, ultimate crabfries and Chickie’s & Pete’s new summer crabfries creation, lobster crabfries, were available for customers to eat up and give money towards the cause.
Crabfries items ranged from $5-$19.
Steve Keiluhn, general manager of the Bordentown location, was in the middle of all the action, helping cook the fries in the afternoon before local customers came pouring in to get their taste of some crabfries.
“It’s busier than a normal Tuesday,” Keiluhn said. “Pretty much everyone is getting an order of crabfries.”
Crabfries4Heroes was the slogan for this year’s festivities, with Chickie’s and Pete’s partnering up with an organization for police officers called the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP).
The proceeds from the event will be distributed through the FOP Survivors Fund to local families in the surrounding areas who have lost a loved one on the force.
For last year’s National Crabfries Day, Bordentown’s Chickie’s & Pete’s location partnered up with Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital-Hamilton to donate all its crabfries proceeds to local healthcare workers in the fight against COVID-19.
Customers would buy one order of crabfries at a time to be sent over to the hospital and be given to a healthcare worker.
According to Keiluhn, the Bordentown location sent more than 362 orders of crabfries to RWJUH Hamilton.
As an entire company, Keiluhn said Chickie’s & Pete’s donated more than 3,000 orders of crabfries to healthcare workers and first responders in the surrounding areas.
“It brings a new aspect to the business,” Keiluh said of National Crabfries Day. “Crabfries is what made our company. We like to focus on that feature.”