Cavalcade

The Texas State Fair is the biggest in the country, but you probably knew that already. 2.5 million visitors pass through the turnstiles every year, and Nate Janousek has made it his business to feed them, along with other fairgoers and expo attendees across the country.

Straightforward enough. But when fair leadership decided to tear down aging buildings along the Midway, they asked Nate for something pretty ambitious: to build a contemporary food hall with 8-10 windows serving up Texas-style treats. One cohesive experience, with a mandate to pay homage to the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition. 

Fortunately, we’d already done something like this in partnership with Fun Biz and Shelter Architecture at the Minnesota State Fair. We partnered with them to develop a site plan that would house existing food trailers within branded enclosures, creating a food hall environment built from stage truss and modular banner systems designed to evolve year over year.

The 1936 Centennial Exposition had as much bombast as you imagine it would. Spotlights swept across the Midway. Banners and flags lined every corridor. Cowboys and cowgirls posed alongside art deco architecture.

The Cavalcade was the centerpiece of it all, a pageant-style romp that used 300 actors on a 3,000 square foot stage to march through four centuries of Texas history, a show so sweeping that its original runtime of 3 hours needed to be cut in half. For a Texas fair food hall with an eclectic menu, it was the energy we wanted.

We plunged into the archives for inspiration, and they didn’t disappoint. Classic poster art. Deco letterforms. Bold geometry and saturated color.

But a museum piece wasn’t the goal. So we merged the deco bones with a healthy dose of cowboy culture, neon accents, and imagery built around Fun Biz’s actual food concepts. The result is a brand that feels like it’s been part of the fairgrounds for decades. Playful and original, but rooted in something real.

For a space that serves 10 concepts under one roof, the brand needed to unify without flattening. Cavalcade does that. Every touchpoint speaks the same language, but the menu sets it apart. Come because of the brand. Stay for the turkey legs. Or pork belly bacon bites. Or Mexican street corn pizza. 

With a modular environmental system built on truss and interchangeable banners, the brand is designed to grow as the space does. Year one is stage truss and printed banners. Down the road, it could be permanent structures, shipping containers, or something nobody’s thought of yet. The identity will hold either way.