One vender rules them all: Sweet Martha’s Cookie Jar. You could say, metaphorically, that the streets of the Minnesota State Fair are paved with Sweet Martha’s chocolate-chip cookies. You could say it literally, too. Look down, as you’re tramping around in search of the All You Can Drink Milk stand (three dollars a ticket) or a cup of grilled peaches and cream from the Produce Exchange, and you’re likely to see a sandy, flattened cookie, pounded into the ground by thousands of feet. Sweet Martha’s, which operates three stands at the fair, is more lucrative than any other food purveyor by a huge margin. In 2024, it pulled in nearly five million dollars, more than twice as much as the next most successful vender, Pronto Pups, which sells a variation on a corn dog, dipped in pancake batter. The reason for the debris is not that people are discarding the cookies but, rather, the way they’re sold. Sweet Martha’s cookies are baked to order, then served warm in precariously tall stacks, teetering out of a paper cup, or, better yet, the stand’s signature plastic bucket, which gets loaded with about four dozen cookies despite fitting only three dozen. Veteran fairgoers know to bring ziplock bags to contain the excess, but cookie collateral is inevitable.journey-inline-newsletterinline-newsletter