County fairs, similar events have been canceled, but food vendors still set up shop

A piece of the Westmoreland County Fair is living on through food vendors who have set up shop in the Westmoreland Mall parking lot this week.

John the Greek Food Concessions and Seivers Pit Stop Grill are scheduled to serve food through Sunday, located in the parking lot near JCPenney.

The Westmoreland County Fair was scheduled to run Aug. 20-28, but was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“The Westmoreland Fair is usually this weekend so we wanted to come and give the people their favorite food items,” said Josh Seivers, owner of the Pit Stop Grill.

A steady stream of people came and went from the food stands Wednesday afternoon, stopping by for fresh squeezed lemonade, fried Oreos or gyros. While profits are nowhere near where they would be had fairs gone on as scheduled this year, operating their stands is a small piece of normalcy, said Sophia Antonucci, whose family owns the Greek food stand.

On Wednesday, Antonucci’s mother, cousin and daughter worked the stand at the Hempfield mall, while her dad operated another stand at the Monroeville Mall in what the family has dubbed their mall tour week. The event is part of a larger “Fairless Tour” the family embarked on at the end of May.

They are following their fair schedule they have followed for years, stopping in familiar areas like Butler last week and Clearfield, where the county fair would have been held two weeks ago. They have set up in Auto Zone parking lots and at volunteer fire departments, paying rent when necessary.

“A big part of it is just to give a little piece of those fairs to the customers,” Antonucci said. “These are people (who) we see their familiar faces year after year.”

According to the Pennsylvania State Association of County Fairs, 96 fairs out of 108 fairs in the state have canceled this year’s events. Another six have modified operations.

Now, Antonucci said the family is advertising their upcoming stops through their Facebook page.

“That’s the way we’re reaching out to people because there’s no other way to do it,” she said. “Things can change, too, for us. That’s another thing that we’re noticing. We go one place and then we always know to expect that if something happens it might not work out. A lot of people are very helpful with us.”

And, so far, the event has helped recoup some of the money lost over the summer, Seivers said.

“It feels the same, just a little slower,” he said about being back to almost business as usual.

The stands will be available at Westmoreland Mall from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday. The hours at Monroeville Mall are 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday.