The Wisconsin State Fair is known for many things, but one stand that has stood the test of time is the Pork Shoppe. Pork producers were one of the few commodity programs that first brought their products to the state fair. Kerri Retallick, Executive Vice President of the Wisconsin Pork Association says they started with the butterfly chop and that remains their number one seller yet today.
“All of our pork products that we serve are processed in Wisconsin,” says Retallick. “We’re working on a program called Wisconsin Raised that we will hopefully have up and running next year. This would allow us to serve only Wisconsin raised pork.”
The butterfly pork chop is their best seller, followed by pork on a stick and the pork burger. Retallick anticipates selling about 25,000 sandwiches this year. They are also on track to selling around 17 thousand butterfly pork chops. In order to make this possible they have around 350 volunteers that come and help throughout the 11 days.
New this year, the Pork Shoppe is now being run out of two trailers versus a tent. The trailers have warming trays for the buns and meat to keep things moving efficiently.
Retallick explains, “What will happen is the customer will put their order in and they’ll be given a ticket. They ‘ll go around to the side window and be given their food. Then they go down to station three and they get the condiments and fill up their sodas. It’s been a pretty efficient system since we’ve got the bugs worked out of it.”
The plan is to work with the pork chop committee to potentially use the trailers for other events. The goal is to make it a great experience for their volunteers and customers as well as to promote pork products beyond the fair.
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