Bob Marcoe and his crew will dip some 60,000 Granny Smith apples into about 10,000 pounds of sweet cream caramel during the 17-day run of this year’s Puyallup Fair.

They will also be adding bacon bits to vanilla ice cream and calling it the “Avalanche.”

Things change, and things stay the same.

There’s still a rodeo, and onion burgers, and this will be the 100th year for scones.

New for 2011, Ben Hilberg of Sumner’s Premier Services Group will be selling deep-fried Kool-Aid, deep-fried macaroni and cheese, deep-fried bubble gum and deep-fried Rocky Mountain oysters, which are not oysters by any stretch. (They’re beef testicles.)

Hobby Hall will once again celebrate obsessions both elegant and obscure, the grandstand show will offer an array of entertainments, and pitchmen will once again sell cookware, vegetable slicers and mops of varied design.

“Over 40 years I’ve sold 15 different kinds of mops,” said Chuck Rowe, president of PNW International.

This year he’s looking for a good return at his L’Paige lipstick booth, among others.

The roller coaster will continue to roll in 2011, baby pigs still will suckle and prize chickens will strut in their cages.

“The hardest thing, when you take the details out, the hardest thing is how to keep this organization relevant, not just this year, but 20, 50, 100 years from now,” said Kent Hojem, Puyallup Fair CEO.

And relevant at the fair means finding a balance between embracing change and respecting tradition.

FAMILY CARAMEL

Bob Marcoe has inherited a tradition begun by his grandparents, Floyd and Dora, who first came to the fair in 1930.

Along with caramel apples, which Marcoe expects will constitute 75 percent of his business for the next two weeks, his staff primarily creates and sells peanut brittle and fudge while selling Dreyer’s premium ice cream.

Add the bacon Avalanche.

“Knowing my father and grandfather, they loved ice cream and they loved pork. They’d laugh,” he said last week during a break in staff training.

The Avalanche “is going to attract peoples’ attention, but I don’t want it to be the only thing we sell. We’ll also be doing a waffle cone dipped in chocolate. That’s new for us. This economy has forced us to be more creative. We love the challenge,” he said.

He does not necessarily see himself as the owner of the Marcoe family enterprise. “I’m a caretaker,” he said. “This is a family tradition.”

He’s working this year with his two sons, Robby and Billy, 26 and 24.

“Bacon goes with everything,” Robby said. “It’s a great combination with ice cream. Nobody does anything like this but us.”

Bob Marcoe knows innovation can gather attention, create heat, but there’s more to the formula.

“Tradition is of the highest importance,” he said. “We honor tradition.”

At 57, this is his 42nd year at the fair.

SCONES AND KIELBASA

“We always look at ways to improve what we’re doing, and not become complacent,” said Ben Hilberg. “That’s just our business model.”

Being at the fair, doing what he does, “is a privilege, not a right,” he said. “We treat it that way. I don’t think there’s been a year that we haven’t tried something new, or invested in improvements. This year we’ve spent $20,000 on improvements. It’s exciting for us.”

Hilberg operates 14 points of service at the fair – including Mad Greek, Park Bistro Beer Garden, Butch’s Better Burgers, Sausage Shack, Mo’s Mexican Kitchen, Meridian Grille, Mongolian Grill and others.

Others including Totally Fried, where customers are finding a series of deep-fried delicacies.

“Every year, we’re looking at our menus, what works, what doesn’t, and what is going to bring our guests back – not just to visit us, but back to the fair. The fair is built on tradition, we are a member of the fair family, and we have an obligation,” Hilberg said.

There are some concepts and products at the fair “that you don’t have to fuss with – corn dogs, cotton candy, scones. But there are those of us who are not lucky enough to have those offerings in our tool belt. I think some of us just look at ways to keep changing it, to keep the customers excited.”

This year, there will be a one-third pound ground chuck burger. And this year, tech-savvy customers will be able to shoot a series of tags on their smartphones and gain entry for a chance to win some Apple Bowl tickets or a new TV.

Not all innovations succeed.

For Hilberg, broasted chicken was a bust. “That was an expensive mistake,” he said. “I was convinced it would be the next corn dog. I could have satisfied the demand using my mom’s skillet. I tried battered potatoes years ago. That didn’t work. It just didn’t catch on.”

But people stand in line for killer kielbasa and the Cascade Burger, among others.

For Hilberg, it’s not just the money he’ll make.

“The fair is kind of a disease,” he said. “Once it gets in your blood, it’s a passion. For me and my daughters, it’s a passion. I think about it all year. The money is secondary. It’s just 17 days of special.”

STEP RIGHT UP

This year, Chuck Rowe and his family – owners of PNW International – will operate 11 sales locations at the fair. He started selling household products on the fairgrounds back when most fair pitchmen didn’t care about quality or repeat business.

“For us, right from the start, everything we sold had a money-back guarantee. We’ve evolved – now, every product has a 30-day guarantee, money-back.”

Now, customers repeat.

Rowe said, “I’ve had it happen so many times, somebody says, ‘I bought such-and-such, what have you got this year?’ If you don’t have a good reputation, you’re not going to stay in business.”

Rowe started with Perma-Clear, a product that, once applied to glass or plastic, prevented fogging.

His favorite was the Crock Stick knife sharpener. The Can Do Mop did well, as did the hand-hammered Chinese wok.

Australian soap, curling irons, exercise machines, Garlic Grater.

“We’re always looking for new products,” he said. “We’ve been around long enough, we don’t have to search for things. People come to us. You have to have something that’s new and different. You need something that will keep the public’s imagination.”

This year it’s a product that turns the liquid of your choice into a slushy-like drink. It’s a trip for your lips, my friends, a beverage with leverage, an icy liquid day at the beach right there on your own happy tongue. Rowe said the product “is so hot, nobody has stock but us. We bought a container of it.”

Hopes are high.

“Everything you do is a risk,” he said. “You never know for sure if it will sell.”

But the weather is warm this year, and the economy continues to drag – which is a good combination for someone who sells refreshment. “When the economy is not doing well, we usually do well,” Rowe said. “If the economy is doing really well, we don’t do so well. If the economy is bad, people don’t have a lot of money, but they still need some relaxation and relief.”

Take hamburgers.

Larry Ball, owner of the fair’s single Earthquake Burger outlet, expects to sell 23,000 pounds of ground beef this year.

“We’ve got something that works, and we keep it going,” he said. “The guy that stands in line to buy my food has been waiting 11-and-a-half months. It’s the quality that brings people back.”

EVOLVING

Some people return to experience what they have experienced before, and some come to see something new.

It’s a difference Kent Hojem, fair CEO, often considers.

Take beer.

“Six years ago, it was my first year as CEO,” Hojem said last week. “The Valley is still a small place in some ways. I would be doing a presentation to a service club, and someone would say, ‘I understand you’re serving beer.’ Yes, we are, I’d say. We felt like it was time. Invariably, the response was, ‘It’s about time.’ There was some objection, but it is just another thing our fairgoers wanted.”

Some changes at the fair come with changes that affect the larger world.

“We’re weaving technology into the operation,” Hojem said. “Social media, tickets online, Groupon, Living Social, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare. There are new ways to communicate.”

And new ways to spend money. “The fair business is one of the last strongholds of cash,” Hojem said. “That is absolutely evolving.”

In not too many years, fairgoers may have the chance to buy credits for games, rides, food and other points of sale online or onsite and then attend the event without needing to spend actual greenback money.

Hojem said there are some aspects of the fair he will not change, no matter what.

“As long as individuals can produce Grange displays, those are sacrosanct,” he said. “And we spend a lot of resources keeping livestock competitions alive.”

Rides. The Rodeo. The roller coaster. “Try taking away all the Scramblers (a midway ride). Just try it.”

Scones. Caramel apples. Kitchen gadgets. New mops. And a variety of shows at the grandstand.

“It isn’t just Buck Owens and Roy Rogers anymore,” he said.

It’s something more, here in an age of acts that regularly perform at venues including the Tacoma Dome and local casinos.

Not that all shows are a success. As with a new gadget or bacon-infused ice cream, there are risks.

Vanilla Ice didn’t do well.

New Kids on the Block – mostly unknown when they signed, but wildly popular by the time they arrived in Puyallup – were a sell-out smash.

For Hojem, primarily, it’s still about fruits, vegetables and animals.

“Our mission needs to evolve so we can still teach children and adults where our food comes from,” he said.

But still.

“As the world evolves, we’ve got to evolve with it.”

C.R. Roberts: 253-597-8535
c.r.roberts@thenewstribune.com