Fifty Lakes Meat Raffle & Bingo

Fifty Lakes Bar & Bottle Shop started the meat raffle back in the mid 80’s.  We were the first bar to have a meat raffle in Crow Wing county. We got the idea from some patrons who told us about some bars in the cities were doing it. We had to have charitable gambling so the fire dept. was approached and we were off. At first we raffled off one  whole prime rib roast. The tickets were sold for .50 and at times it was hard to sell enough to cover the cost of the meat. As time went on we had the roast cut in two so now we had two winners. Eventually we decided to do smaller packages and have more winners-this lead to more interest and more people attending the event.

The ticket price was changed a few years ago to $1.00 and the amount of meat varies with the season and the amount of people in the area. The fire dept. keeps records and determines how many tickets to print and how much meat to raffle. Mondays raffle lets you pick your meat prize and Thursdays we give the meat away from least value to most. Either way our raffle starts with ticket sales at 4:00, raffle at 5:30 and most of the time we are done by 6p.m.