A GREAT day location scouting. GO GIT 'EM DAWGS!

Howdy Folks,

WHAT A DIFFERENCE! Two years ago finding a location was like pulling teeth. Everybody wants to talk to me now, everybody wants me set up in front of their store. So my issue just went from where to find a place for my cart to which one of these is best for me? That's right, for once, the hot-doggers are calling the shots. They are begging me. But you gotta get out there and find 'em.

Locations are hot now. Your magic words are "my colorful cart brings in traffic and keeps them  here longer".

I had this one strip-mall going. It looks a bit shabby. Not your top-of-line merchants here. I talk to one guy, he's like "ask next door" like he was blowing me off. Nope, it was the owner of the strip mall who had his own shop. Next thing you know, he's bringing over the other merchants to meet me. Right there on the spot, they decide having me there is a good idea.

OK guys, so let's take this to college. Let's take it Chicago Mark Style. I think I'm at least an honorary-graduate of Hot Dog U level dogger. A location does not money make. You have to use every marketing trick in the book. For a little strip-mall with a motely assortment of businesses, I'm looking at each one of them and their marketing base as mine now. Can we do special events in the parking lot? Can we be featured on your mailings and flyers? Can we offer you and your special customers a discount? Would you consider offering special store-only coupons to other merchants in this strip mall to shoppers go from store to store?

But Mark and others like Dr. Of Barbque will tell you I got ahead of you there. Locations demand you look carefully at traffic patterns. I call it "the banana split". I think of that 70s show with the big stuffed animals, the Banana Splits. Each direction of traffic is a banana. You want at least one banana, two banana, three banana, four. If each of these can spot you in time to make a decision and have time to pull into your traffic stop area, you are doing spontaneous business. It's a certain class of customer, our old-time staple customers who would really rather stop by a little stand and buy from us. For this we need visibility and a safe parking area.

->KIDS, EVALUATE YOUR PARKING/SALES AREA LIKE A COP WOULD. Do not impede the flow of traffic, try to keep your parking area safe and organized. Make your own STOP and WATCH FOR CHILDREN signs if you have to.

But anyways, the point I'm building is once at a location, you need to start marketing your customer profiles one by one. Or all at once. Do discounts for employees at ALL local businesses. Network with ALL of them. It's location sales. It's tough to get started. But we all know that a well-built location is a cash-register.

->FOR YOU FIRST-TIMERS this can be one of the most intimidating things especially if you run into trouble with the municipality. Don't get discouraged at your first apparent failure. In a small town, if you are alienated by one faction, you might find you've just unwittingly befriended another!

Every single successful dogger (I used to know) on this board has at least one tale of failure. Getting chased off a location, getting rained out of the festival you spent $2500 in fees and product to get into or starting out bravely at a location and just waiting and waiting for sales that never come. We've all been there.

BUT LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING. You might have heard it before, but it's worth repeating, it's literally "our way, the true way of the dogger". There's two kinds of us out there: the nice guys and the meanies.

Us nice guys, it's not like we're going to tell you EVERYTHING right up front, but we'll try to show you some ropes and if you run out of ice of buns and we got extra, we can make a deal. If we know a location we're not covering and it doesn't hurt us, we'll tell you where it's at. You get into doing festivals and stuff and you get a flat, you bet you want to know another vendor you know, another nice guy is gonna stop and help get you through. And that is why us nice guys tend to win in this business. In a very informal way, we're all working together. Because that's part of the creed:

We're all in this together. And for those of us who know what's going on, we know there's enough out there for all of us. It can be as deep as doing a partnership on a large gig where we put carts together to offer menu variety or as small as knowing who to send an over-book to. Because we all get over-booked sometimes.

->The split on these team-work types of things in the old tradition is even-split or flat-rate. If you are the guy who puts it together, you don't ask anyone to share in the risk. Unless they are just starting out or something and you have to train them.

The meanies you will know. One of the fist things they do is see if you are permitted and inspected and they'll be why the inspectors show up on your first day of business. Otherwise, it will be a nearby business owner (oops, you didn't do your location scouting properly). From there, the meanie will proceed to talk trash about you all over town. They might send neighborhood kids to rob from you or get people to take up all your parking spaces. Lords, the ways of the meanies are endless but not at all creative. Apply the same rules as you do the "good ol boy network". Accept that for every meanie and their cadre, there is an equal and opposite cadre of nice networks and contacts and customers out there who don't like meanies any more than you or I do.

So if you can identify the meanies in your town, in a way, they just helped you out by telling you everybody in town you DON'T want to deal with.

Get out there and succeed. There's more than one way to skin a cat. Not that as doggers we want to put it that way all the time......

www.AZHotDog.com

Great post. Thanks 

Greetings all,

I am a future Dogger here doing my homework.
Tonight I am researching posts about finding locations.
One or more posts mentions the advantages of private property vs. Public property.
I can't seem to find an old post that answers the following questions:

If I secure a location on private property... (Say I set up at a car wash or gas station just as an example, also assume I have a city business permit and health dept. cert.)

Can the city still say that the property is not zoned for hot dog carts ???

Am I somehow magically safe from zoning laws because I am in a commercial area???

Hope the question makes sense.

I have spoken to several doggers in my area and they always say the same thing about finding locations.
"If you are on private  property, you are safe"

Good luck to all, great site you have here :-)

The only way to know is to ask the people who are in charge of your zoning laws. It's different everywhere. Where I am you can sell food in any commercial property but no carts, you have to be in a building. You better ask the people who are in charge, don't just take their word for it, get the zoning laws and read them.

Usually it's an an annoyance when people bring up old posts instead of just starting a new one, I'm glad you brought this one back to life because I missed it the first time around.
I just read it three times, it says so many good things not just about carts but also about business, one of the best posts I have read here. 

I would think the city views its as the Carts are not on city property and thats all they care about. There could be a clause in the zoning about multiple businesses on the same property. What would stop the Car Wash from letting 6 vendors on his property???????????

great site oz and great read good luck ! buck

You do know that you can get a copy of the city zoning map from the planning commission or the zoning office.  Some  cities put them online for free.  Others will charge you for them (Socorro charged us $5.50).  We've been told we can only set up on property zoned for "food".  There is no such designation!  Guess we need to ask the guy in charge (the one who told us that) just where on the map is it zoned "food" as all the restaurants in town are on property designated a C2 (same as all the stores, including the one that asked us to set up there).

I agree wholeheartedly.  This is a great post. 

I'll be opening a breakfast/lunch food trailer operation.  Hot dogs will be an item I'm going to sell.  I'll be working in one location on weekdays, and it's on private property.  I'm in VA, so, odds are, I won't be competing with any of you.  :)

Anyway, I went on a nice go-round with the Zoning people in my county.  First, I had a guy tell me no problem, but I was referred on to a higher up in another division within Zoning.  This guy (turned out to be a group as he conferred with about 10 other people) told me the trailer would have to be tied to a foundation, or I would need to move it every night.  Now, where am I going wrong here?  Strapping a trailer to a raised slab completely immobilizes it.  Waste water and such needs to be dumped, and the unit needs to be cleaned.  It would be nice just to have the option to leave the trailer in the spot overnight here and there for convenience.  They got into other nonsense, like landscape buffering, etc.

Then, I discovered that my county Health Dept has a Mobile Food Coordinator.  I didn't know that such position existed.  It's a good thing for certain.  He told me that Zoning has no say in what I do on private property, especially when it's zoned C1.  I'm trying to get this in writing. 

Who would you believe?

Thanks!
Sheetserr

 

By the way, Oz, I hope you really rake it in, man.  Best of luck!