Minnesota State Fair vendors excited for the return of large crowds

FALCON HEIGHTS, Minn. -- With just three days left to go, vendors and organizers are making final preparations for this year's Minnesota State Fair.

Monday morning, hundreds of vehicles ranging from golf carts to semi-trucks packed the fairgrounds, transporting everything from kids to kegs.

Last year's fair was the first for sunglasses vendor AJ McAllister. Despite the smaller than usual attendance, McAllister was impressed, making the Minnesota State Fair an annual must for his business, Crystal Vision

"We love Minnesotans. You guys are awesome. I mean awesome. it's just a great experience for us. It doesn't even feel like work to be honest with you," McAllister said. "The people are great, the vendors, all of the state fair employees are awesome to us. We love the weather."

Tom Fitzpatrick at Mancini's said the restaurant crew has been out here for the last week.

"That is very exciting, because they want to have the regular fair and the regular crowds. It's just nice to have a lot of people out here," Fitzpatrick said. "Just waiting for food deliveries and just fine tuning, cleaning up and stuff like that, but we're pretty much ready to go."

David Theisen at the Ball Park Cafe said his staff has been out at the fairgrounds for several weeks.

"I get excited just to get together with everybody again and all the other vendors out here all our friends," Theisen said.

For food vendors, this week is the time to break out the tables and chairs and to prep the kitchen with food and drink deliveries coming.

Despite the ongoing worker shortage, all of the vendors we spoke with said they are fully staffed and ready for the crowd.

Fair organizers said they're expecting crowds to be back to pre-pandemic levels, which means more than 2.1 million people expected during the 12 days of the fair.

"It would be great if we hit two million again. It would be great and I'm full staffed again," Theisen said. "You can't go in thinking that you won't hit that number ... but that's a big number. Two million's a big number and it'd be great."

Fair officials held a hiring fair last month looking to fill 1,200 positions. As of Monday morning, they said they were 90 percent of the way there with roughly 270 job openings left.