Buffy Meyer mixed cheese in a large stand mixer in a food truck at the Palmer Fairgrounds. The mixture is stuffed into umiak, or as Meyer calls it, “Alaskan jalapeno popper.”

“It’s half a blanched jalapeño, stuffed with the three-cheese mixture, wrapped with a thin fillet of seasoned salmon, then about a quarter pound of seasoned salmon goes on top, then the bacon and the whole thing is grilled, so it’s a lot of prep,” Meyer said.

Meyer owns Fish On! Camp Grill with her husband, Brady Hayden. They have been at the Alaska State Fair for 11 years and are currently busy preparing local foods that they will sell to thousands of Alaskans when the fair opens in just a few days.

For the couple, the fair is a huge business opportunity.

Meyer is Inupiaq, and the business’ menu features Alaska Native-inspired dishes like grilled king crab legs, salmon sausage and cheesecake-stuffed flatbread. The couple sources seafood from Rollman Family Fisheries and Norton Sound Seafood Products.

During the fair, Meyer and Hayden are expected So so much food that they earn at least half of their annual revenue. The percentage used to be higher before they started offering more catering and other events.

“The fair was pretty much the majority,” Meyer said. “The fair was probably 80%,” Hayden added. “This year, it might be about 50-50 so far,” Meyer said.

Other businesses are in a similar situation. Alaska State Fair CEO Jeff Curtis said many booths generate a “significant portion” of their annual revenue during the event.

He said most of the 75 food vendors, like Fish On!, do not have a physical store. They are exclusive to the fair and people come back every year to eat at the stalls.

He said the aim of the fair organizers was to offer a diverse culinary landscape.

“We want these vendors to be successful and we don’t want them to compete too much with each other. We want them to offer something unique, and that’s good for the trade show visitors and good for the vendor,” Curtis said.

Curtis said there is a long list of food retailers vying for a spot at the fair.

Meyer secured her spot about 10 years ago. She said she heard there was interest in opening a salmon-baking booth at the fair. She submitted a proposal and was selected.

Hayden built the booth next to The Gathering Place. He said he frequently hears of people coming to the fair specifically for the food. Last year, he said, they served over 25,000 customers and he believes it will be even busier this year.

Given these demands, it is important to stay focused, he said.

“You can’t let that stress consume you because if you let the stress get to you, everything goes wrong. So you just have to focus. I just have to focus on my grill, grilling fish, grilling this, getting that done and not looking at the line and just going as fast as I can,” Hayden said.

To keep prices low, Meyer and Hayden buy whole salmon and process them themselves. Meyer estimates that she consumes 2,300 kilograms of fish during the fair.

“The salmon is fresh, straight from the fisherman, and we get it the day it’s caught, filleted it and removed all the bones,” Meyer said. “It’s definitely a long labor of love.”

In front of the food truck, her nieces are seasoning salmon fillets and rolling them into umiaks. And later, Meyer will start making various sauces, including her pineapple-rhubarb-habanero mustard that goes on her salmon sausage.

And then, of course, there’s the flatbread. The couple says their mornings start early during mass.

“I let the yeast rise, that’s for the flatbread. We start early in the morning by activating the yeast and then letting the flatbread dough rise,” said Meyer.

Hayden said the best part of the fair is introducing her food to Alaska visitors.

“We’re just very happy with what Fish On! Camp Grill has become. It’s our responsibility to maintain the status that it has,” Hayden said.

Beyond the fair, Hayden and Meyer are working to bring their seafood chowder, salmon sausage and seasoning mix to wholesale and expect to have them on grocery store shelves by August 2025. The fair runs through September 2.