Is The Booth Economy Growing?

The short answer is yes. The longer answer is that it depends on which part of the booth economy you’re talking about — because the booth economy is not one thing. It has three distinct modes of temporary commerce, each with its own dynamics, its own vendors, and its own relationship to growth. Understanding which mode you’re looking at changes the picture entirely.

It has three modes — and they are not growing at the same rate.

With that framework in place, the growth question gets more interesting.

Tents & Tables: The Boom Mode

The tent-and-table world is the fastest-growing of the three modes, and the event ecosystem that supports it has expanded substantially over the past two decades. The evidence comes from multiple directions: the venues, the attendance, and the underlying consumer demand for the goods being sold.

The clearest single measure comes from farmers markets. USDA data tracks the number of U.S. farmers markets going back to 1994, and the growth line is steep.

From 1,755 markets in 1994 to 8,771 in 2019 — a fivefold increase averaging nearly 7% annual growth. That expansion has slowed since roughly 2011, and the farmers market count has been relatively stable in recent years. But the slowdown in new market formation doesn’t mean the sector contracted; it means it matured.

Meanwhile, other tent-and-table venues have kept growing. Music and street festival counts have expanded well past pre-pandemic levels. According to JamBase, which tracks festival data for Google, the U.S. hosted 1,168 music festivals in 2024 — surpassing the pre-pandemic total of 1,140 in 2019, with more than 100 inaugural festivals added in that year alone. Artists performing at festivals worldwide nearly doubled between 2019 and 2024, from roughly 41,000 to more than 74,000.

State fairs, another major venue for tent-and-table vendors, are drawing record or near-record crowds. The Iowa State Fair set an all-time attendance record in 2024 with 1,182,682 visitors. The Illinois State Fair broke its own record for the fourth consecutive year. The Minnesota State Fair drew nearly 1.9 million people — its fifth-highest total ever, despite several stormy days.

The underlying consumer demand for handmade and artisanal goods is also running strong. The U.S. handicrafts market was valued at $155 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach nearly $200 billion by 2030. That consumer appetite is what fills the events, and what fills the events is what creates the opportunity for vendors.

Trucks: Real Growth, Maturing Trajectory

The food truck industry has grown substantially over the past fifteen years, though the explosive early growth has settled into something more sustainable. The industry’s arc — from niche curiosity to mainstream presence — is well-documented and measurable.

From roughly 4,000 trucks in 2010 to more than 92,000 businesses in 2025 — a compound annual growth rate of around 24% through 2020, slowing to approximately 13% from 2020 to 2025. Industry revenue reached approximately $2.8 billion by 2026, and forward projections point to a more moderate 6–7% annually through 2030.

The truck mode also includes non-food mobile retail — boutique clothing trucks, flower trucks, bookstore trucks — which don’t have industry-level data as clean as food trucks, but are a visible and growing presence at the same events that draw tent-and-table vendors.

One distinction worth making: truck growth is partly a maturation story. The industry is no longer in its gold rush phase, when almost any truck in almost any city could find an audience. It has become more competitive, more regulated, and more dependent on events and festivals for reliable foot traffic — which makes it more intertwined with the tent-and-table world than it might appear from the outside.

Tradeshow Booths: Stable, Not Growing

The tradeshow sector tells a different story — not one of decline, but of a mature industry that was growing slowly before the pandemic, was devastated by it, and has since clawed most of the way back.

The U.S. B2B trade show market was valued at $15.6 billion in 2019, having grown steadily but modestly through the prior decade at roughly 2–3% annually. Then the pandemic hit. The global exhibition industry lost nearly 69% of its revenues in 2020. Recovery was slow and uneven — some shows came back stronger than before, others are still trailing pre-pandemic attendance.

By 2024, the U.S. B2B trade show market had reached $15.8 billion — finally surpassing the 2019 benchmark. But the forward growth rate is projected at only about 2.77% annually through 2028, keeping tradeshows as the slowest-growing of the three modes.

The internet was supposed to kill tradeshows, and it didn’t. The reason is that tradeshows serve a function the web handles poorly: dense, concentrated, in-person deal-making between buyers and sellers who are already in the market. The buyers at tradeshows are largely professionals with purchasing authority. The event isn’t about discovery the way a craft fair is — it’s about transactions, vendor evaluation, and industry relationship maintenance. That function has proven durable. But it isn’t growing the way the rest of the booth economy is growing.

What the Three Modes Tell Us

Taken together, the three modes describe a booth economy that is expanding — but unevenly, and in ways that reflect broader shifts in how people shop, eat, and spend their time outside.

The growth is concentrated in the most accessible mode. Tents and tables require the least capital, the least regulatory navigation, and the least specialized infrastructure of the three. A vendor can enter the tent-and-table world for a few hundred dollars and a weekend. That low barrier, combined with a proliferating event ecosystem and strong consumer appetite for local and handmade goods, is driving the sector’s expansion.

Trucks require more capital and more operational complexity, but they benefit from the same expanding event ecosystem and from a consumer culture that has fully normalized mobile food as a dining option. The truck mode is maturing, not declining.

Tradeshows occupy a different position — more institutional, more B2B-oriented, more dependent on industry health than on consumer trends. They are likely to remain a significant part of the booth economy without being a growth engine within it.

That has implications for who enters the booth economy, what the typical vendor looks like, and where the energy — and the opportunity — currently lives. The booth economy is not a single industry with a single story. It is three distinct modes of temporary commerce, each with its own dynamics, its own capital requirements, and its own relationship to the broader economy.

Understanding the differences between them is the beginning of understanding how any of them work.