Economics on a Stick
The State Fair is a 12-day tradition and a roughly $77 million-a-year operation. Here’s what milk, cookies, and a team of St. Thomas economics students can teach us about prices.
The Minnesota State Fair is a lot of things. A family tradition. A test of willpower. The only place in the state where a pickle on a stick counts as a vegetable. It is also a surprisingly big business.
The 2026 fair drew 1,923,325 visitors over 12 days, the seventh-highest total on record. In 2025, the most recent year with full financials, it brought in about $77 million and finished more than $4 million in the black, all without taxpayer funding. The surplus goes right back into the fair.
Food vendors pay the fair 15% of their sales. Operators have told Minnesota Monthly that a really good stand keeps about 20 cents of every dollar before income taxes, after covering food, labor, sales tax, and admission tickets for their own workers. Sweet Martha’s Cookie Jar is doing just fine. It sold $5.24 million worth of cookies in 2025 from three booths, more than twice the runner-up, Pronto Pups.
Our favorite fair research comes from the University of St. Thomas. Economist Tyler Schipper and his students, nicknamed the Purple Price Trackers, built the On a Stick Index. It works like the Consumer Price Index, the government’s measure of how prices change for everyday goods and services, except it tracks admission, parking, rides, and 18 fair food and drink staples. To rebuild prices from past years, the students zoomed in on menu boards in old Instagram photos. Around our office, we call that being approximately right rather than perfectly wrong.
Their findings make a tidy lesson in inflation. Fair prices rose about 4.1% in 2024 and 7.7% in 2025, the year all-you-can-drink milk jumped from $2 to $3. As Schipper put it, milk and cookies drove inflation that year. In 2026, the index cooled to 3.1%, close to overall U.S. inflation of 3.4%. Admission, cookies, and milk held steady. The turkey leg did not. It went from $15 to $20.
By the Numbers
The Minnesota State Fair, 2025 and 2026
1.92M visitors over 12 days in 2026 | $77M approximate fair revenue in 2025 |
$0 in taxpayer funding | 15% of food vendor sales goes to the fair |
$11.50 starting wage for fair jobs | 36 new foods on the 2026 menu |
Fair inflation vs. overall inflation
Yearly change in fair prices, measured by the University of St. Thomas On a Stick Index
| Fair prices, 2024 | 4.1% |
| Fair prices, 2025 | 7.7% |
| Fair prices, 2026 | 3.1% |
| Overall U.S. inflation, 2026 | 3.4% |
Price check
What the classics cost at the 2025 and 2026 fairs
| Item | 2025 | 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gate admission | $20 | $20 | Same |
| Sweet Martha’s bucket | $20 | $20 | Same |
| All-you-can-drink milk | $3 | $3 | Same |
| Turkey leg | $15 | $20 | Up 33% |
The leaderboard
Top food vendors by 2025 sales
| Sweet Martha’s Cookie Jar | $5.24M |
| Pronto Pups | $2.23M |
| Mouth Trap Cheese Curds | $1.95M |
| The Perfect Pickle | $1.70M |
| Fresh French Fries | $1.59M |
Sources: University of St. Thomas, Minnesota State Fair, CBS Minnesota, Axios Twin Cities, KSTP, and the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry. Revenue and vendor sales are 2025 figures, the most recent full year reported.
What this tells us about the economy
Your inflation rate depends on what’s in your bucket. If your fair was admission, cookies, and milk, you paid the same as last year. If it included a turkey leg, that part cost a third more. Nobody pays the average. The inflation you feel depends on what you actually buy.
Slower inflation doesn’t mean lower prices. Fair inflation fell from 7.7% to 3.1%, but the milk is still $3. When inflation cools, prices climb more slowly. They rarely come back down. Schipper has pointed to rising labor costs as a likely main driver, and wages don’t tend to go backward either.
People keep spending, but they do more math. Attendance stayed strong, and Schipper told NPR that most fairgoers still open their wallets once they arrive. Some repeat visitors told him it has gotten pricier, so they go less often than they used to. That’s a pretty fair picture of how people handle higher prices.
For planning, the takeaway is simple. We build plans that assume costs will rise over time, even in the years inflation cools off. The plan leads the portfolio. Always. And a good plan leaves room for a second bucket of cookies.
Warmly,
Austin Boniface
Sources: University of St. Thomas On a Stick Index, Minnesota State Fair, CBS Minnesota, KTTC, Star Tribune, Axios Twin Cities, NPR, KSTP, Minnesota Monthly (2018), and the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry. Revenue, profit, and vendor sales are 2025 figures, the most recent full year reported. Other figures are for 2026 unless noted.
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