FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MONDAY, OCT. 12, 2009
| CONTACT: | Brian Long, director N.C. State Fair Press Office (919) 839-4664 |
Unraveling the deep-fried phenomenon
RALEIGH -- One of the most popular questions about the N.C. State Fair each year is “What is going to be the new deep-fried food?”
No doubt people ask because surveys of State Fair visitors indicate food is the number one reason people attend the Fair. With that in mind, some food vendors focus their energies between fairs on trying to come up with the “next big thing” that will capture the imagination of culinary adventurers and create a feverish buzz that can be calmed only by a first-hand assessment of the delicacy.
So we posed a few questions about the psychology behind new food products to Dr. John Rushing, a retired professor emeritus at N.C. State University specializing in industrial food processing. Rushing worked with several thousand food entrepreneurs, including some actual State Fair food vendors during his 28 years at the university.
While creating a successful food product for retail sale and creating a “deep-fried hit” at the State Fair isn’t exactly comparing apples to apples, Rushing good-naturedly offered some insights into our love affair with outrageous food items, be they dipped in batter or chocolate or covered in powdered sugar.
In his experience, food entrepreneurs have had two main motivations in creating food items: a desire to preserve ideas and recipes from their families or to make a little extra income.
“The State Fair is a big opportunity,” Rushing said. “People can make a lot of money if they get a big splash. These are gee-whiz products. If each booth gets 300 people a day to try their product, they are pretty successful. There are that many adventurous people easily.”
In his experience with food entrepreneurs looking to reach and achieve success in the retail market, Rushing said creating a product that is too different creates challenges of time and money for a business to educate consumers through advertising and marketing.
“You don’t have that luxury when you’re dealing with a shorter event like a fair,” Rushing said. “What they have to do is make a play on something familiar to people.”
That can take the form of essentially “repackaging” a standard food item.
There are ample examples of this concept: deep-fried mac-n-cheese, deep-fried Oreos, deep-fried peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, deep-fried pizza, barbecue sundaes.
From a consumer perspective, Rushing offered his best guess about eating habits at the Fair. “The State Fair is a party atmosphere, a let-it-all-hang-out atmosphere. People aren’t following their usual ‘dietary rules.’ People are there to experience something new and to do something exciting.”
Rushing surmises that that abandon translates into these new food experiences.
So what would a guy who has seen a lot of product ideas come to the table for development suggest as a deep-fried food idea or chocolate-coated creation? After some thought, he described a spiced up, spin-off of some delicious fried cornbread patty he had recently eaten at a friend’s house.
He suggested starting by slicing and flattening a jalapeno, then place a slice of cheese inside (he wasn’t specific, but a creamy Mexican blend sounds delicious), then batter it with a quality cornbread mix and fry. That sounded pretty good. He also mentioned some deep-fried green olives he had tried once that were pretty tasty.
Rushing has worked with a number of food vendors over the years who had questions about offering food for sale at the Fair. Their worries often center on food safety and shelf life as it relates to food quality. “They don’t want to have any product left over and they don’t want to throw product out in the middle of the Fair either,” he said.
One of the constants regarding the creation of new food products is the desire many vendors have to keep their new idea or ideas close to the vest. That always presents a little challenge to answering that most popular of questions, “What is the new food item at the State Fair?”
A few foods that have slipped out this year: chicken-fried bacon, chocolate-covered bacon, funnel cake fries, deep-fried banana splits, and caramel-and-bacon-covered candy apples. There may be a few more new food items that pop up, so come check it out Oct. 15-25.
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