Making a sweet dream By George Nianiatus. The Times Herald (March 3, 2001).

PORTVILLE — A hobby-turned-career decades ago of making maple syrup has helped Portville’s Randy Sprague achieve his dream of creating a banquet-size pancake house, gift shop, production facility and wholesale equipment department under one roof.

Just a couple weeks ago, Mr. Sprague and his wife, Toni Marie, started serving up stacks of hotcakes with their maple syrup and several other menu items at the T-shaped, two-story, 13,000-square-foot facility on Route 305 that’s just north of the village of Portville.

Sprague’s Maple Farms Pancake House and Restaurant has been no small project. The notion sprang in Mr. Sprague’s mind nearly a decade ago when he bought the land.

The country-style restaurant can seat 225 comfortably. Actually, “We can seat up to 300 if we have to,” said Mr. Sprague while seated in the restaurant that’s filled with wood and accented with an 80-foot-tall stone fireplace and elk antler chandeliers hanging from the high ceiling.
Rustic and comfortable is how Mrs. Sprague designed it.

A sugarshack facade covers the staff’s entryway to the kitchen, for example.

Throughout, “We have basic earthy tones with burgundy and greens for a lodge-like look,” said Mrs. Sprague.

For an added touch, the Spragues had Portville artist Mark Weitzel paint some murals that epitomize visions of maple syrup production from tapping trees to boiling down syrup in a sugarshack on a wintry day.

So far, customers have been impressed with the restaurant’s appearance, its grand scale and the food.

Mr. Sprague said, “It’s been well received.” Weekends have been particularly busy. “We serve about 1,200 meals each day on weekends.”

He said, “It’s meeting everything we hoped it would.”

Adjacent to the restaurant is a gift shop with all the products that Sprague’s Maple Farms makes and has been selling through retail outlets, its catalog and Web site at www.spraguesmaplefarms.com.

A long lobby leads to the restaurant that takes customers past a windowed maple-syrup bottling operation and also a sweet-smelling boiler room where sap is turned to amber syrup.

“The production operation is a people-friendly place,” said Mr. Sprague. He plans to soon offer visitors free tastings at the counter-like window of the production room.

The production room is more than just a show for visitors.

Maple syrup production will be more efficient since the Spragues purchased some state-of-the-art equipment. A new evaporator, for example, can handle 2,400 gallons per hour. On average, it takes 40-45 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup.

Last year, Sprague’s Maple Farms tapped 13,000 maple trees to produce 1,500 gallons of syrup. This season, though, he is hoping to produce 3,000 gallons of syrup.

At the other end of the facility, Sprague’s Maple Farms has a wholesale department to sell equipment to other maple syrup producers.

Regarding the overall scheme of the facility, Mr. Sprague said he and his wife have traveled around the Northeast extensively. They saw many individual maple-syrup-themed gift shops, pancake houses and equipment suppliers.

“But no one had it all under one roof like this,” he said. To his knowledge, it may be the only place of its kind in the state or the country.

Plans call for a marketing campaign to publicize it. “We’re marketing it for bus tours,” he said. “We already have the ad campaigns ready to go.”

Last fall Mr. Sprague pegged the total project for the complex in excess of $300,000. Now, without giving further details on the total price, he said, “It’s a significant amount.”

The project’s general contractor was Kinley Corp.

Despite the project’s scale and complexity, Mr. Sprague said he didn’t have a bad experience. “Everyone was really great to deal with from the general contractor to the subcontractors.”

He noted Sprague’s Maple Farms is the site for Cornell University’s testing grounds for the Sweet Tree Maple Program.

Mr. Sprague said future plans include trails into the woods where an actual maple syrup sugarshack will be located. During the maple syrup season, a horse-drawn wagon will take visitors to watch tree tappings and the production process of how syrup once was made.
Not ending there, Mr. Sprague hopes to initiate educational programs for high school field trips as well.
Hours at Sprague’s Maple Farms are 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

When Mr. Sprague was a young boy his passion for producing maple syrup was kindled by a caring friend and mentor who was better known as Uncle Van, a local farmer who originally owned the land that is now the site of Sprague’s Maple Farms.

His hobby evolved into a small business in 1977. Six years later the business incorporated and it experienced steady sales growth ever since.


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