A veteran entrepreneur keeps the fair on ice

We skate on it. In an epic geological convulsion, vast sheets of it hewed the landscape in which we live. Leavened by road salt, gray wads of it cling with perverse tenacity to our vehicles in winter.

But the Minnesota State Fair is the largest single event in these parts where it is consumed.

Ice. Tons of it.

Depending on the weather and attendance, between 20 million and 40 million ice cubes may make their way into snow cones, drinks and other places during the fair's 12-day run. Ice use should pick up for the next couple of days, as the fair finally gets the hot and sticky weather that puts ice in such hot demand.

Keeping the daily party supplied is a logistical undertaking of glacial proportion, directed by Larry Abdo and his family.

"This ice business is absolutely boot camp for entrepreneurship," said Abdo, who has been running the fair's ice supply operation, Gopher State Ice Co., for nearly 30 years.

Tucked unobtrusively behind the Haunted House near the Como Avenue gate, Abdo's command center hums with activity: two-way radio chatter between the base and some of the dozen workers hauling ice on carts to all reaches of the 320-acre fairgrounds, carts being loaded, orders hollered and the steady drone of the refrigeration units of three semitrailers.

The trailers are packed with 30-pound plastic bags of ice cubes that will be loaded, 25 at a time in an interlocking pattern to prevent spills, on smooth-rolling, rubber-wheeled carts Abdo designed. The workers schlep the ice either directly to concession stands, dining halls and the Food Building, or to a network of 20 storage bins scattered around the fair, accessible to vendors.

Staying ahead of demand, and getting the highly perishable product delivered quickly, Abdo said, "is a nice mental matrix," honed by experience.

"Our goal is not to get a phone call," from concession owners, he said. "That's one advantage of our having been here so long. We know their usage; we know their expectations. ... When we're on top of our game, we get very few phone calls."

In the past, ice was dispersed using three trucks. But congestion and safety concerns led to a decision to haul it mostly by hand and cart.

Abdo finds hockey players make the best workers. Not only do they have the strong calf muscles needed for controlling the carts, but they tend to hold other attributes learned, fittingly enough, on the ice rink.

"They see the field differently, they know how to move through a crowd -- they have this synergy," Abdo said. "They're silent, and they get it done and they love it."

Along with concession stands, Abdo's crew keeps first-aid providers supplied with ice. On extremely hot days, ice has been sent to the barns to cool down pigs, which have no sweat glands (which explains their affinity for wallowing in mud).

"One year, when it was really hot, a marching band collapsed at the main entrance," Abdo said, adding that the young musicians were in wool uniforms. "We had full bags of ice on nearly 100 kids."

Snow cones, safety

The snow cone as we know it took off in 1934, with the invention of the modern snow-cone-making machine by Ernest Hansen in New Orleans.

Pam Kortekaas and Eric Christenson, working a snow cone stand beneath the ramp of the fair's grandstand, are heirs to that tradition.

"Depending on the temperature, the ice can really change," said Kortekaas, a Hennepin County social worker in her non-fair life. "When it's dry, it sometimes doesn't want to stay together very well."

The trick to efficient snow- cone-making, Christenson explained, is to have a series of ice balls -- the top portion of the cone -- already made in advance. In a two-step process, the foundation is set, followed by the ball.

Some customers are particular about the amounts of syrup, Kortekaas said. "And when it's really hot, some don't want any syrup at all, they just want the ice to help them cool down."

Ice storage bins and ice-making machines at the fair are kept under a watchful eye of six to eight inspectors from the state Health Department and the Department of Agriculture.

Inspectors are mainly looking for bacteria and food-borne pathogens, said Kevin Elfering, director of the dairy, food and meat inspection division of the Agriculture Department.

For vendors with their own ice machines, there are carefully prescribed rules for sanitizing the machines before they are used, Elfering said. They are especially prone to slime and mold in the moist conditions, which can harbor bacteria.

"We've never had a case of food-borne illness out there," Elfering said of the fair.

Stands have been dramatically upgraded over the years, especially in the critical area of providing proper hand-washing equipment. Sanitizing and refrigeration systems have also been improved. And most food is prepared and consumed quickly.

"Plus, so much of the food is deep-fried," Elfering said. "No bacteria is going to survive those kind of conditions."

Economics of ice

Like a farmer's, Abdo's profit margin rides a lot on the weather. He pays a fee to the fair for the right to distribute the ice, which he buys from a broad network of suppliers that reaches into Iowa and North Dakota.

Food vendors, in turn, buy the ice. A few provide their own.

"You've got to get over the hump. We need five really strong days to get over the hump," he said. Ideally, those are sunny days in the mid-80s: Not so cool as to chill the demand for ice, but not so hot as to inspire late-summer lethargy. "If it gets too hot, say 95 degrees or so, that doesn't help anybody. They don't drink anything."

For Abdo, the harried enterprise is part calling, part addiction. While it's not a road to outlandish wealth, he sees deeper values: the family-like connection to his suppliers and food vendors, watching young crew members learn business skills and meet the physically and mentally taxing task and pushing to keep pace with improvements demanded by those who run the fair.

And mainly, he gets to work with his sons, Paul, Corey and John. For good measure, his wife, Caryl, and daughter Amanda run a pita sandwich stand.

"I am an entrepreneurial junkie," he said.

His enterprises include commercial and residential real-estate development and management in Minneapolis and elsewhere: his Anxon Co. is creating Six Quebec, a 21-unit condominium project at the corner of Marquette Av. and S. 6th St.; he's developing a chain of restaurants called My Burgers, with the first one opening in the Skyway Building downtown in six weeks; and he has launched a venture in Ohio called Racetown Inc., a network of minor-league NASCAR racing tracks.

The latter project is a joint venture with a couple of students from Notre Dame University's Gigot Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, where Abdo is a director and guest lecturer in the master's program.

"Whenever I go there to talk," he said with a grin, "all they want to hear about is ice."

Jim Anderson is at

jeanderson@startribune.com