Darke County Fairboard member Brian Rismiller received the Concession Manager of the Year award from the Greater Ohio Showmen’s Association.
“The Greater Ohio Showmen’s Association is all your carnival ride people, your concessionaires, the people that you see here at the fair and other fairs that put on your rides and games and concessions,” Rismiller said. “They get together, and they nominate different people for different things. I was nominated for Concession Manager of the Year for putting on different events that helped those individuals greater themselves.”
During Covid in 2019 and 2020, Rismiller, along with the Fairboard, worked to continue to put on events that allowed vendors and concessionaires to continue to work and to work safely.
Rismiller was surprised and excited to receive the award
“They only nominate one person every year, and they picked me from Darke County to get it,” Rismiller said. “I was surprised because there are a lot of good people that are in the fair industry that support what’s going on and try to make things better for the concessionaires and stuff.”
Since Darke County is one of the larger fairs in Ohio, they were able to modify events to make them Covid safe.
“2019, 2020, when Covid hit, they virtually told everybody you’re having fairs, and you’re not going to do these things,” Rismiller said. “They still allowed us to have food truck rallies to the extent that we could have drive-thrus. So we put on different events out here where folks could come, order their food, drive-thru, and pick it up.”
The board and Rismiller’s efforts helped vendors and those in concessions continue to work and bring in revenue.
“Since we were one of those fairs and helped put that on, I guess that’s why I got recognized,” Rismiller said. “Some fairs didn’t do anything. We decided that we were going to be one of the fairs that would try to hold events still that people could come to and host.”
Brian Rismiller’s consistent efforts in ensuring the concessionaires that come to the Darke County Fairgrounds are well taken care of is why he was nominated for this award and is clearly very deserving of it.
