Sheboygan's Brat Days will no longer be a weekend event after 2022. Here's why it's changing.
SHEBOYGAN - The Sheboygan Jaycees will no longer host Brat Days as a weekend event after this year, Johnsonville spokesperson Stephanie Dlugopolski said in an email.
“There’s no doubt that the greater Sheboygan community will miss this annual, weekend festival, but we are encouraged that the Sheboygan Jaycees intend to revisit what this festival could look like on a smaller scale while still celebrating our community’s favorite protein,” Dlugopolski said in an email.
Johnsonville has been the title sponsor of the event since 2004, with an estimated 200,000 brats being served over the years at the event, Dlugopolski said.
This year’s Brat Days is slated for Aug. 5-6 at Kiwanis Park, featuring a parade, beer garden, amusement park and several musical guests.
“We look forward to continuing Brat Days in some other iteration and we plan to transition the format of the event in future years,” the Jaycees shared in a statement with The Sheboygan Press. “It's a fluid situation and what the future format will look like is to be determined. The event has been through several variations over the past 69 years and it is time for another variation.”
The Jaycees didn’t provide more information to The Sheboygan Press about what led to the change, but the group shared on the Brat Days website that it has faced “recent challenges.”
Lifelong Sheboygan County resident Dennis Leffin, 78, said aspects of Brat Days have changed since it first started in 1953, such as competitors first having to eat double brats on a full roll to now eating single brats in the brat-eating competition and the name briefly changing to German Days.
Brat Days has also experienced other changes over the years, such as moving to Kiwanis Park from downtown and having fluctuations in attendance.
Sheboygan was also named the Bratwurst Capital of the World in 1970 by former Sheboygan mayor and judge John Bolgert, beating out Bucyrus, Ohio for the title.
Leffin said Brat Days still serves a good purpose.
“They (Jaycees) donate all their money to some projects or another,” he said. “The Sheboygan Quarry was actually furnished by the Jaycees, they put in the equipment. So, they always do a lot of good with their winnings. And that's always been done. They've always donated everything back to the community.”
Brat Days has been one of the Jaycees’ largest fundraising projects, with more than $300,000 being donated to Sheboygan community organizations, like Big Brothers Big Sisters, Jaycee High School Scholarships and Above and Beyond Children’s Museum, over the past 10 years.
Leffin, who was named Brat Eating King in 1957 and then later in 1984 and 1985, said Brat Days has been a unifying event for Sheboygan over the years.
“It gets the people back,” Leffin said. “Sometimes when you'd go down there and you hadn't maybe seen people for 20 years or more and then all of a sudden there they were at the Brat Days. It was like a uniting of friendships again.”
Contact Alex Garner at 224-374-2332 or [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at @alexx_garner.
This article originally appeared on Sheboygan Press: Sheboygan Brat Days sponsored by Johnsonville ends as weekend event
