The following article is from Cannon Taylor, Park Record June 6, 2026
The self-described crepe king was among the 34 retail shops, 20 food vendors and 14 food trucks set up to sell wares at Heber Market on Main at Main Street Park on Thursday.
Despite being royalty, Kent King of Crepe Factory displayed a humble demeanor and an almost aggressive friendliness with a smile permanently plastered on his face as he waved down friends or asked teenage patrons about how the school year had gone.
A Southwest Airlines pilot and aviation science professor with Utah State University, King got into the crepe-slinging business 14 years ago as a way to connect with people. The Heber City local has been participating in the annual Market on Main farmer’s market and concert series all that time, making crepes for many of the local kids as they’ve grown up.
King and his litany of employees, many his children or grandchildren, are most often found at Brigham Young University, where the Crepe Factory sets up for games and events. King’s record is 871 crepes sold over a three-day women’s conference.
Other than his friendliness, King’s key to success is his custom-built kiosk. It has a window display so customers can watch their crepe being made — a tactic King picked up from vendors in Paris — and lights installed to attract patrons like hungry moths.
Crepe Factory sells anywhere from 100 to 150 crepes each Thursday during Market on Main, which runs from the beginning of June to mid-August this year. Inevitably, King ends up giving out many of those crepes for free — but don’t tell his paying customers, he joked.
Market on Main has existed in some shape or form since 1998. Local Paul Askins was tired of driving to Park City for outdoor summer concerts and started a concert series of his own in Main Street Park, printing posters with his dot matrix printer and gathering about 25 attendees.
The event, combined with a Midway farmer’s market in the early 2000s, created the fusion of live music, shopping and dining patrons enjoy today.
The tradition became popular a little over a decade ago, bringing 300 to 400 attendees per night, according to Rachel Kahler, executive director of nonprofit Community Alliance for Main Street. These days the event brings between 600 and 1,000 attendees every Thursday.
This year’s Market on Main is the first organized by Community Alliance for Main Street. It was previously organized by city staff, who took over the responsibility from Askins about six years ago.
efore the event, Kahler was “holding (her) breath and hoping it all works out.” She’d spent weeks making arrangements and putting out fires to ensure permitting, business licenses and the event layout were all in place.
But the attendees wandering through the sea of vendors’ tents, lazing on the lawn or dancing like no one was watching on Thursday were none the wiser to the blood, sweat and tears that had gone into its organization.
Askins, too, is familiar with the headaches that can come from organizing the event.
“When we were first starting out, we didn’t really coordinate well with the parks people, and we had a couple where the sprinklers came on right in the middle of the concert. It was in the summer, so some people appreciated it,” Askins laughed.
There was one summer when bands played in the Heber Valley Rotary Club’s bandstand — which was constructed for the concert series — before it had a roof. Supported by a land donation from the city and financial backing from the Rotary Club, the bandstand was completed around 2003.
Before the bandstand was constructed, Askins found it impossible to convince Parkites and other out-of-towners to make the trek to the Heber Valley for concerts. But “once people got to know that this was a viable venue, I had musicians calling me all year long, wanting to be involved,” he said.
Now, Market on Main’s live acts perform in the much larger, $3.5 million bandshell the city constructed last June, with programming coordinated by Park City’s Mountain Town Music.
“It’s beyond our wildest dreams that the city would put this much effort behind it and build something like this. I mean, this stage can handle big bands,” Askins said.
Although he was a DJ for KPCW for two decades, Askins doesn’t describe himself as a musician. The instruments he plays are the stereo and the radio, he joked.
He is, however, an appreciator of all genres of music, which showed in the types of concerts he put on.
“We’d have a jazz night. We’d have a country night. We’d have a rock night. We’d have a folk night. Everyone of them did really well, except for the jazz night,” he said. “Nobody liked jazz in the valley. Those ones were dead every time. But I think now they could do jazz, and it would be different.”
That’s because of Heber City’s growth in population from about 11,000 in 2010 to nearly 20,000 in 2025, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. With that, population growth has increased diversity in many forms, including in music taste, Askins said.
Another symptom of that increased diversity can be found in Market on Main’s beer garden, where Askins spends his Thursday evenings checking IDs.
“There’s no way that I ever thought we’d have a beer garden outside in the Heber Valley,” Askins joked, though he greatly appreciates the addition.
When Askins started his concert series, he had only lived in Heber City for about a year. He didn’t take credit for making Market on Main what it is today, but he did offer advice about how to contribute positively to one’s community: “You get out of it what you put into it.”
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