With the cost of food spiking this year, some food vendors at the New York State Fair say they are struggling in ways they haven\u2019t in years past.<\/p>\n
“It’s not cheap to be here,” said Dan Rescignano, co-owner of Twin Trees. “With the labor, the insurance and all that, you know, the profit margin [is] nothing amazing.”<\/p>\n
“Prices of everything have gone up,” said Doug Sprague, longtime employee at food stand Tommy C’s. “So we’ve kept some prices the same and others we’ve had to raise a little bit.”<\/p>\n
Even though Rescignano tries to invest in his stand each year, he said profits have lessened due to lower foot traffic at his new location at the fair.<\/p>\n
“I sell a decent amount, nothing crazy. But, yeah, obviously the extra helps a little bit,” Rescignano said. “Nice to save when you can. It’s a lot of hard work out here. We work 16-hour days.”<\/p>\n
Fair director Julie LaFave said vendors of all sizes do have alternative options to shelling out for high foot-traffic locations, namely the Taste New York marketplace.<\/p>\n
LaFave said some local food producers are offered multiple days at a table in the market for free.<\/p>\n
“We give preferential if they are a New York product or New York business,” LaFave said. “And that’s a really great way for anybody who’s a New York-grown and certified business or a producer from New York.”<\/p>\n
For companies like Ma and Pa’s Popcorn Factory, the strategy of location value versus rent cost becomes more complex with multiple stands at the fair.<\/p>\n
“We have four locations here. Every location is a little bit different,” said James Bell, owner of Ma and Pa’s. “They consider a high-volume area versus a low-volume area. So it all just depends on where you’re at.”<\/p>\n
Bell, who’s worked at the fair for nearly three decades, said the fair’s a great opportunity to develop consistent local clientele.<\/p>\n
Yet, companies like Twin Trees are in better positions in some ways now than in years past because of a retired alcohol tax the fair used to impose on vendors.<\/p>\n
Multiple sources confirmed the fair used to require a 25% tax on all alcohol sales on top of New York state’s standard sales tax, but 2026 was the second year the state fair didn’t impose this tax.<\/p>\n
“It’s nice to have a little bit extra money to be able to do with that,” Rescignano said of the tax.<\/p>\n
LaFave also said 100% of wine and 90% of beer sold by stands are required to be New York-made, just one of the ways the fair tries to promote and value local food production.<\/p>\n
“[The fair is] a little bit different than our normal daily grind manufacturing store,” Bell said. “So it gives everybody kind of a break.”<\/p>\n
Tommy C’s, only active during the state fair and without a permanent restaurant location, also runs a special during the fair in which some specialty items trigger donations of $0.50 from each sale to the 9\/11 reparations nonprofit Tunnel to Towers Foundation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the cost of food spiking this year, some food vendors at the New York State Fair say…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[257,17202,9,11,10,49,48507,51,50,12,200],"class_list":["post-339561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-central-ny","tag-david-jacobs","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-fair","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-news","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}