Fueled by Cheetos and Coke, State Fair of Texas Vendors Share Their Daily Hustle

Nevins Concessions has been at the State Fair of Texas since before Tupperware parties were cool (and Tupperware went bankrupt). It has served burgers longer than McDonald's and is older than Barbie.

The Nevins family opened a stand selling burgers at the State Fair of Texas in 1949, making 2024 their 75th anniversary. Tami Jo Nevins-Mayes, 59, is the third generation of her family to run the business. She grew up at the fair, long before child labor laws.

"My daddy would put me on a tall box," she says. "And I'd slap hamburger patties on the rotisserie as long as my attention span would hold. I'd also clean tables and stuff that a 5-year-old could do."

Working at the fair — or rather the arduous and complicated business as a vendor with nine stands — is all she knows. She once worked at a vet clinic briefly and had a few other odd jobs, but she thrives at the fair. The family business continues with her two daughters, who also work at the fair, one as a partner with Nevins and the other with her own stand.

Josey Nevins Mayes (25), is her youngest and was born (or had the audacity to arrive) during the fair.

"I'm pretty sure she came out here the morning I was born," Josey says, sitting next to her mom on a hot day, taking a break from building a stand a couple of weeks before the start of the fair.

"I did, on the way to the hospital," Tami admits matter-of-factly. It's just business, nothing personal.

Josey always wanted to work at the fair like her mom. Tami told her after college she'd make her partner. Representing the fourth generation, Josey now helps with day-to-day tasks, handles media and comes up with the Big Tex Choice Award items, like this year's Nevins' Nutty Bar-laska, an Oreo-topped chocolate ice cream bar with toasted marshmallow fluff and dried strawberries.

That concoction was a finalist in the lauded awards but didn't win. But in 2022 their fried charcuterie board did win: three triangle dumplings plump full of cheese and meat served with a bit of honey and olives.

We caught up with Josey, Tami and her older daughter, Cheyne Mayes Hickey, who peddles gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches at her stand Stay Cheesey in the Tower Building. We wanted to know the physical toll of setting up for the fair, the 24 consecutive 12-hour days of keeping a stand stocked with enough food for a voracious crowd that tops out over 2 million. Also, how do they not gain weight surrounded by fried food all day? (Turns out, the fair is a weight loss miracle for vendors.)

A Year-Round Affair

The fair, despite being open for 24 days in the late summer and fall, is a year-long commitment.

"We start full-time on the first of August," Tami says, which is when they start building their stands. "But year-round, we're doing stuff. We generally take December off and don't even think about it. And then, in January we'll start seeing what we need to repair and see if we need to buy new equipment.

"And then we really start ramping up in the summertime," she says. "We'll start getting some dry stock, nonperishables and all the paper products and start going and getting trailer loads of that and putting it up just to get ready."

A nine-to-five job after that? Hardly.

"I wish it was nine-to-five. Actually, it's probably about the same amount of hours," Tami says of the preseason. "We started about 6:30 in the morning — as soon as we can see something — and then we'll stop around three or four, depending on how hot it is and if we can touch our tools."

"Like I say, the first day is fresh grease and fresh attitudes." – Tami Jo Nevins-Mayes

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All of the stands along Nimitz Drive, a long strip of concessions that includes their main stand, are new this year, creating new challenges in setting up.

"When you have a lot of new, you have to deal with a lot of problems," Tami says. "But normally setup is my favorite time because it is a giant puzzle with layers, and I love seeing it come together."

Tami loves the first week of the fair. "Like I say, the first day is fresh grease and fresh attitudes."

By then there's no time to pay attention to anything but feeding lines of customers. Rest is fleeting, as is actual sleep. Daily steps rank in the tens of thousands.

"I try to get out of bed about 10 till 6 and leave my house about 6:05 and get here about 6:30," Tami says. She starts in the office, going over the previous night's notes and inventory.

"It's very informal," Tami says, "I write everything on a napkin. That's just my system. And I put it on the desk and then the next morning I decipher it and then I'll transfer it to a big piece of paper for my stock man to do."

In the meantime, all of the stands are waking up. Once organized for the day, she'll make a round, checking on each stand. Josey is also making rounds, setting out radios. The rest of the day, they continue to move about, taking care of inventory, employee issues and equipment, and interacting with customers.

"Sometimes I'll stand outside the stand to see what customers are saying about the food after they get it, just because I'm curious that way," Tami says.

Every stand is stocked in the morning, but because of limited space, each has to be restocked throughout the day, which in itself is a full-time job. Complications arise with things like ice cream, since there's only so much freezer space. This year their Nutty Bar-laska — guaranteed to be popular as a Big Tex finalist — is made with an ice cream bar, requiring even more hustle.
"It's the number one thing I think of when I'm coming up with an item," says Josey. "How hard is it going to be to stock? How hard is it going to be to make in a concession stand and how long will it take?"

She adds that's a common misconception about the Big Tex Choice Awards: People think it's a gourmet food contest when actually food is limited to the capacity of a stand.

Cheyne's Stay Cheesey stand is in the Tower Building. Last year, her rookie season, she learned the hard way about ordering inventory for the next day, which needs to be done around 5 p.m. to be delivered the next morning.

"A lot of time, I would forget to just stop and take inventory because we were in the groove and I forgot to step away," she says. "So there was a couple days where we kind of just had to hope someone could hotshot us some food or I'd borrow it from other people if they had something similar."

Around 6 they start their nighttime routine, including taking inventory (again), which for Tami and Josey means nine stands, for a Ben E. Keith order, and then a separate inventory for the stock truck. Tami has a scooter making it easier to crisscross the fairgrounds but she still clocks around 15,000 steps a day, reaching as high as 18,000 on some days. She has three pairs of shoes for the fair, which she rotates out each day to "let 'em breathe."

"I never wear the same pair of shoes two days in a row," she says. "and I buy very good shoes and my feet never hurt. Now, my back hurts, but never my feet."

The Weight of the Fair

And everything is more complicated depending on the day. It could be a rainy, Texas-OU weekend, slow or busy. Fluctuations in attendance can throw the most well-thought-out inventory plan out the window.

"I think on the first day of the fair, I ordered 10 boxes of bread," Cheyne says. "And I went through that before two in the afternoon. So that was a big, big eye-opener for me."

Cheyne, who doesn't have a scooter, lost a lot of weight last year from going nonstop, rarely taking the time to sit down and eat. She's making it a point this year to focus on hiring more employees so she can step away from her stand more often, take a break, eat a meal, and yeah, do inventory. She's also put on some extra weight like a bear readying for hibernation after losing more than 20 pounds last year.

So, do concessionaires eat fair food all day every day? Josey says not a lot, but enough so that by the end of the first week she just wants to eat a whole head of lettuce. But she will grab a grilled cheese sandwich from her sister's booth.

Other than that, Josey says they don't have time to stand in lines, "We have 24 days. We don't get any more days than that, so we have to keep moving."

Cheyne prefers sandos from the Sandiotchi stand near hers, and she'll grab one of her mom's burgers because, she says, they're still some of the best she's ever had "and I'm not just saying that."  She has other go-to's like a banh mi brisket sandwich with fresh sliced jalapeños, cucumbers and carrot slices, "It's just really refreshing after you've been out there all day." Bailey's Black Eyed Pea Soup is another form of sustenance she likes that other fair insiders have told us about.

"We have 24 days. We don't get any more days than that, so we have to keep moving." – Josey Nevins Mayes

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For Mom, Tami, staying fueled is a little more rudimentary and, perhaps, on-brand for the fair.

"Some days I start with Cheetos and a Coke," she says, "and some days with a cheeseburger and then maybe later in the day, I might grab a few french fries. It's a great fair diet. It's the only time of year I lose weight."

As the day gets closer to the 10 p.m. closing time, it's time to tally up the daily sales. Fairgoers use small paper coupons to buy food and each stand has a safe (called "cans") to collect the tickets. At night the cans are taken to a scale and weighed to see how much money they made, an archaic accounting method in a time of tap-and-go digital payments.

For Tami, she goes home not long after the closing bell rings and, luckily, she lives close enough to sleep at home. Some stand operators, especially those from out of town, sleep in a trailer in an adjacent reserved lot and don't leave the fairgrounds for the duration.

Cheyne, still a newbie in the life of the fair, stays closer to midnight most nights. When she's short on sleep, she likes to sneak over to the massage chairs in the Mattress Firm showroom for a little rest. This year she's looking forward to a new menu of deviled eggs a few stands down in the Tower Building to help her power through.

It beats her mom's Cheetos and Coke, but then again, it seems to be working well for her, still hustling at the fair since flipping burgers for Dad five decades ago.