Gobble Gobble, a Black-owned food truck’s 24-year legacy at the Indiana State Fair 

Did you know the Marion County Coroner is also a business owner? 

Those visiting the Indiana State Fair this month might catch a glimpse of Alfarena McGinty, elected official and owner of Gobble Gobble, a turkey-based food truck that’s been at the Indiana State Fair for the last 24 years. Every summer, McGinty takes a two-week vacation from her day job to work the Indiana State Fair alongside her family, just like her father, Alfonzo Tyler, did before her. 

“It’s not about the money,” McGinty said. “It’s about being nice to people. It’s about having good customer service. It’s about communicating with people.”  

Gobble Gobble is a family tradition, McGinty said. It was one of the first Black-owned food vendors at the Indiana State Fair when Tyler started it in 1999. He’d take about 17 days off from his job as an Indianapolis police officer to sell turkey legs in a little cart in the back of the fairground across from the DNR building. When Tyler retired from both jobs in 2011, McGinty took over and turned the food cart into a food truck. 

However, being one of the only Black-owned vendors at the fair was initially challenging. When her father started the business, he wasn’t given much advice beyond state fair policies and procedures and had to learn about best practices, crowd expectations and pricing by trial and error, McGinty said. 

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Once McGinty took over, she and her sister, Laura Offett, had a better understanding of how to operate the truck to “make enough to sustain your business and have a little bit extra,” McGinty said. It also doesn’t hurt that McGinty’s siblings continued to “volunteer” their time to help her run the truck over those two weeks, sometimes even staying overnight to prepare food for $2 Tuesdays and Gospel Sundays on the Hoosier Lottery Free Stage.  

“People still come back and ask for my dad,” McGinty added. “My dad only comes to hang out with us a little bit. He doesn’t do any work, but they come back and still ask for him, because they know him from 24 years ago.” 

Although there are more Black-owned vendors at the state fair today, there used to be “a lot of Black faces in the windows, but they’re not the actual owners,” Offett said. After working on the truck for the last 22 years, Offett said questions about ownership were quite common. 

“We own it,” Offett confirmed. “It’s ours.” 

An avid supporter of youth programming, McGinty partnered with New B.O.Y. to employ young men to help her set up the truck for the fair and tear it down once it’s over. Next year, McGinty said she wants to expand the partnership and start employing youth to work and make money on the truck, or even help in the coroner’s office. 

“Obviously, the goal is to keep the kids off the street, right? If we can do that by having them be at work and making money, then that’s the goal,” McGinty said. “What else can we do as a partnership to help these young men stay off the street? You don’t know people unless you see people in certain roles, so if they never see a Black coroner, you’re not going to know that a Black coroner exists.” 

Aside from feeding her community, serving as an elected official is incredibly important to McGinty, who started as a secretary in the coroner’s office 28 years ago. It was a temp job that she worked in the mornings while earning a clinical psychology degree in the evenings, but she’d fallen in love with the work and how she could help people by her second day. 

Still, McGinty was a young Black woman navigating a white male-dominated field, and she faced challenges when it came to even finding someone who would agree to train her on death investigation.  

“I was like, ‘Who loves dead people this much? Who loves doing this work?’ But outside of that, I’m nosy, I got to ask all the questions I wanted to ask of families, of bystanders, of witnesses, and they had to answer me.” McGinty said. “Naturally, I’m an educator … so teaching is a passion for me, and being able to educate the families of what was happening during the course of that death investigation was fulfilling for me.” 

McGinty stayed at the coroner’s office and eventually became a deputy coroner. In 2005, she was appointed chief deputy coroner, where she spent 18 years working under three different coroners. Then, in 2024, she was elected Marion County Coroner after running unopposed. 

“It was amazing because I just never expected to be the elected corner,” McGinty said. “Still to this day, I love every single day of my job. I love it whether it is conducting investigations or talking to families, or just working with other community organizations providing community service. We offer free mental health support for families who are dealing with grief and loss. That is important to me because first and foremost, we take care of the dead, but we serve survivors.” 

The work often comes full circle, even when McGinty serves the community in other roles. People still come up to her at the Indiana State Fair, knowing she is the coroner, just to tell her about how well they were treated and taken care of after losing a loved one, McGinty said. 

“It fills my soul to do this,” McGinty said. “I live to serve, and that is on all three fronts: education, work in the community, and being here (at the Indiana State Fair). … I am just so grateful to have the opportunity to be around and available where people can see and touch and be a part of me and what I do on all fronts.” 

When McGinty eventually retires from Gobble Gobble, Offett’s son plans to take over, keeping the business in the family and continuing their legacy of turkey legs. 

“It’s wonderful because there are a lot of Black people, Black families, that have things, and then it’s like their kids really don’t want to do what their parents are doing,” Offett said. “I think he would be really good at it, you know? Taking it over, it’s really good for him. It’s good for us because we can continue it on.” 

For more information about Gobble Gobble Food Truck, menu items and Indiana State Fair operational hours, visit facebook.com/gobblegobble317. 

For more information about the Marion County Coroner’s office, visit indy.gov/agency/marion-county-coroners-office.  

Contact Arts & Culture Reporter Chloe McGowan at 317-762-7848. Follow her on X @chloe_mcgowanxx.