With the numbers now crunched, country led the way for music, maple was a hit and pickled Dr. Pepper fueled what state leaders called a “hugely successful” 2024 New York State Fair.
“As one of our state’s most cherished traditions, the fair is the perfect backdrop for educating visitors on the important of agriculture to our communities and to our economy while also providing top-notch entertainment, workforce development initiatives, culinary delights and so much more,” said Commissioner of Agriculture Richard Ball in a press release.
More than 868,000 people visited the fair this year, down from last year’s approximately 933,000 visitors. However, the fair had 11,652 total agricultural entries for livestock, flowers, produce, wine and fine art competitions, which is an 11% increase from last year.
In her first year as director, Julie LaFave said she heard many anecdotal stories that highlighted the successes of the 13-day event.
“These statistics and figures not only support those stories, but they also tell us that fairgoers truly enjoyed all that the Great New York State Fair had to offer,” LaFave said in a press release.
Zach Marji, owner of Fair Deli, had two food vendor locations at the fair this year, his original Fair Deli food truck and then a new space in the Eatery, Chocolate Taps.
“It was my first time doing two locations and we were blessed with how busy we were. Our original location was almost three times as busy as any other year,” Marji said Tuesday in an interview.
He credits this to the relationships he has developed over the years with customers, but also to a new item they featured – the pickled Dr. Pepper.
“I did not think a combination of pickles and soda would bring in that many people,” Marji said.
Over at Chocolate Taps, Marji served chocolate-covered strawberries that featured pieces of cosmic brownies, Oreos and cheesecake.
“I expected to go through 30 cases of strawberries per day, but on average, I went through 150 cases a day and the most I went through was 210 cases in one day. I was just pulling strawberries in from every distributor in Syracuse,” Marji said.
Milk and maple highlights
The Milk Bar served 14,785 gallons of milk including 11,775 gallons of chocolate milk, 1,570 of white milk and 1,440 of strawberry milk
38 calves were born in the Dairy Cow Birthing Center. Over the 11 years it has been at the fair, there have been 400 calves born in total.
More than 16,000 people visited the Mobile Dairy Experience, which was new to the fair this year. It is a 53-foot-long trailer that shows the process of milk from the farm to the grocery store.
The Taste NY pop-up market sold $28,883 worth of New York state products from 87 different vendors, which is an 18% increase in revenue from last year
In particular, the New York Maple booth saw a major increase in their sales as well.
They sold 7,600 maple ice cream cones
5,000 milkshakes and slushies
2,000 bags of maple popcorn and 5,300 bags of maple cotton candy
650 packages of maple dog biscuits
1,000 lollipops, 330 pounds of maple hard candy and 200 dozen maple donuts
Entertainment records
Country music singer Megan Maroney brought in a crowd of nearly 47,000 fans, making it the second-largest concert in fair history behind last year’s Lainey Wilson concert. Flo Rida welcomed a large crowd as well with 42,000 people. Blippi was the highlight of the Chevy Court concerts with 15,000 fans attending.
The fair hosted 575 events over the 13-day period, including ground entertainment from Nerveless Nocks, Ally Walker Chalk Artist and Rock It Robot, whose performance went viral on TikTok with over 20 million views.
Wade Shows’ Midway saw an all-time high with 1.5 million fairgoers opting to visit their rides. They also say they gave out the equivalent of 50 48-foot semi-trucks worth of prizes and sold nearly 50,000 turkey legs, fried dough and corn dogs.
Different kind of rides
There was a 15% increase in people traveling to the fair via the Centro park-and-ride services from Destiny USA, the Centro hub in downtown Syracuse and Long Branch Park in Liverpool. They totaled 155,820 one-way trips to and from the three locations.
The tram service provided by the fair to help people get around the grounds traveled 3,774 miles, assisting 18,726 fairgoers.