Souper Bowl a Super Success

The Marco Island Area Chamber of Commerce hosted their Ninth Annual "Souper Bowl" at Mackle Park on February 11th. Over 230 people were waiting in the line, but as soon as the gate opened at 11:00 AM everyone entered smoothly. There were hundreds of beautiful ceramic bowls waiting for them at the entrance, all hand-painted by students from the City of Marco Island Parks and Recreation, Lely High School, Marco Island Charter Middle School and Tommie Barfield Elementary School.

If you haven’t heard of the Souper Bowl before, basically that bowl is the ticket! Ten local restaurants were ready to fill those cute bowls with their signature soup. Proceeds benefit the Leadership Marco Scholarship Fund which provides educational scholarships to deserving local High School Seniors looking to further their education…so everybody wins at the Souper Bowl.

There were also silent auction bowls made by local talented artists Judy Chinski, Mary Navarro, Betty Newman, Nancy Norman, Tara O’Neill, Bruce Robertson, Linda Schwoeppe and Karen Swanker.

“Thank you so much for attending the 2023 Souper Bowl,” said Colleen Long, President of the Marco Island Chamber of Commerce. “This looks like the best Souper Bowl Tailgate Party I have ever been to. We are so thankful to our restaurants on Marco Island. We are the luckiest citizens. We have the best restaurants! We’d also like to say thank you to our volunteers: Key Club from Marco Island Academy, and none of this would be possible without the very hard work of the Marco Island Chamber Volunteers. Let’s hear it for Donna and Dianna! Just to let you know we’ve sold 800 bowls and all of this money will go to our scholarships, so thank you all so much!’’

Dianna Dohm, Executive Director of Marco Island Chamber, said: ‘’I want to make an announcement. We have silent auction items here. And I just talked to Grant Phelan. He is the CEO of the Phelan Brands and they are represented here with Pinchers, Deep Lagoon and CJ’s. He is the title sponsor, but he is going to match the total amount of $1,000 on our silent auction items which is fabulous. It’s huge for our community and huge for our scholarship fund.’’

“Guys what a great event,” said Grant Phelan. “I just want to say Dianna and her team did a fantastic job. We’re honored and super excited to be a part of this. We are going to match up to $1,000! So I need you to spend $1,000 on those bowls. Somebody write it up and I will match it. We love giving kids scholarships. Thank you all for showing up. I hope you are enjoying this event, can’t wait to do more.”