Rice County
1C
Tuesday, July 16, 2019
Fair
Faribault Daily News
July 16-21, 2019
Fair fried goodness: Temple Concessions is back with curds and corn dogs
By RENATA ERICKSON rerickson@faribault.com
From working concessions as a kid to flying boxes of cheese curds into the Faribault Municipal Airport in his Cessna 310 1956, Troy Temple has spent decades serving up county fair staples like curds and corn dogs to hundreds of thousands of hungry fairgoers. His family’s Temple Concessions began as a spud wagon, hawking baked potatoes and onion rings at Faribault’s first Heritage Days in 1983 — but the Temple family started with a much sweeter product. Steve Temple, a 1962 Faribault High School graduate and FHS teacher from 1968 to 1991, helped students learn wood shop skills and to weld docks, and build and fly motorized U-control airplanes.
As a teacher, Steve decided to find a summer job with the help of his family. They began by raising honeybees and selling honey at the local farmers market out of the backdoor of their Suburban, but soon tried their hand at the fair — a place Steve was familiar with in his years of selling popcorn and pop as a kid working for Mealey Concessions up and down the old grandstand. In 1982, the Temple family tried Ray Unser’s root beer stand — which Unser started in the 50s — at the Olmsted and Dakota County fairs. While the Temples decided to buy an empty concession trailer instead, Steve Bauer and Jamie Bauer eventually purchased the stand in the late 1980s. Their four children — Carrie Schliep, Betsy Bauer, Steven Bauer and Christopher Bauer — still manage the stand with the help of their children.
The Temples transformed the concession trailer into a spud wagon with an oven and fryer in time for the first Faribault Heritage Days celebration to sell baked potatoes and onion rings. They tried to bake the potatoes in the spud wagon, but the hood design led to a fire behind the fryer. Despite the setback, the Temples were able to quickly fix the issue and have a successful first fair. “We had to knock the wall out, stop the fire, finish the event and then the next year it was redone correctly and we never had a problem after that,” Troy said. “You learn a lot in this business from mistakes and experience.” In 1984, Troy, then 16, helped his father build their
TEMPLE
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Temple Concessions sell cheese curds and corn dogs in 2003 with a stick stand built in 1984 by the Temple family. (Photo courtesy of Troy Temple)
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