Soup Sunday is coming up fast – January 31 in Northwest Arkansas and February 21 in Little Rock. When you purchase your tickets, you may find yourself wondering, along with many others, why do we always remind you to remember your muffin tins?

As you may know, dozens of delicious soups are available for you to sample to your heart’s content at our Soup Sunday events. As our guests enter, we offer you all a little cardboard tray to carry around your soups. But we didn’t always do that. In the early days of the Soup Sunday event, which started 40 years ago in Little Rock, we didn’t have trays. Folks were having a hard time juggling all the soup cups, so they started bringing muffin tins. Genius, right?

And so, a tradition was born. Our guests started to bring muffin tins to carry more soup cup samples. Some “souper fans” even decorated special tins that they continue to use every year! If you see someone at Soup Sunday with a decorated muffin tin, you know those folks are die-hard, longtime fans of the event and supporters of Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families. Others like to bring their own tin because it cuts down on waste.

No muffin tin? No problem! We’ll still have those cardboard caddies for you to use, which you can load up with soups, breads and desserts from some of Arkansas’s most beloved eateries. This leaves your other hand free to shop our silent auctions ’til you drop (but you won’t drop your soup – see, these caddies are “souper” helpful!).

We look forward to seeing you (virtually this year) at Soup Sunday!