Introduction of New Cart Owner in the Making

Hi there, I have been seriously considering starting a hot dog cart business for about a year now and have been reading these forums for about 2 months. There is a lot of great info here and I want to thank everyone who has shared their knowledge and experience.

Before I ask any questions, I'd like to take a moment to introduce myself. My name is Matt and I live in La Crosse, WI. I am 30 years old and have done a lot of different jobs in my 12 years post high school. I taught ballroom dance full time for 5 years and really loved it. Sadly, there is little money in that career unless you are the very best. (i wasn't) Since then I have been a taxi driver, a lawn care guy, a loan officer, and waiter for a lot more years than I wanted to be. I just moved to La Crosse about 6 months ago for my current job as a leasing agent for a company that owns strip malls all over the country.

However, I am tired of working for someone else. I want the freedom that comes from being my own boss, succeed or fail. I realize that this will likely mean that I work more hours than I do now, at least for the first few years. So be it.

I have been saving my cash and I think I will be able to open up my stand in spring 2009. I'll keep my full time job in the beginning, working the cart on weekends. In the meantime I plan to do the things that have been recommended in numerous other threads. ie: get the permits, scout locations, etc. I also plan to attend hot dog university later this fall.

I do have a few concerns though. For one, I live in a smaller city. There are about 100,000 people between La Crosse and Onalaska, which are so close together they may as well be one city. However, we do have 3 colleges here toalling about 10,000 students during the school year. We also are in the guiness book for most bars per capita and most bars on one street.

My current thinking is to take advantage of the fact that there are so many college kids drinking downtown and after 10pm there is really not much food around. I am kind of a night owl so working 10pm until 3am (bars close at 2 30) doesn't bother me.

Do any of you have experience working in smaller markets like this one? Perhaps I should consider moving to a bigger city like Madison or Minneapolis. What about the idea of working nights/bar rushes instead of the traditional lunch crowds and sporting events? Is this feasible?

One last question. I have seen a few different web sites offering books and cds with information on getting a hot dog cart business off the ground and making it successful. Have any of you used these products? If so, have you found them useful, or do you think that the archives of this site have most of the same information for free?

Thanks for reading this, and thanks for any replies.

Nicely done MattS. Unfortunately I'm not in the business but there are plenty of people on here who canhelp you, so let's go people, help this guy out and maybe I'll learn enough to go into the business too! There are thousands of years of experience from the "School of Street Dogs" on here. Good Luck!

Matt, a target market of 100,000 is NOT a small market. There are bigger markets than yours, but yours is by no means small. My target market is 42,000. You are on the right track at this time focusing on becoming educated and technically competent in your future craft and learning the art of vending food. But success in the retail food service trades is only partially dependent on that factor.

Within ANY target market the food vendor has competition: everyone who sells food. Your market is everyone who eats food. Your mission as a small business owner is to get as many people as possible to eat your food instead of anyone else's food...including the food that people might prepare for themselves. Are you up to that challenge?, because MARKETING IS THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU WILL DO IN ORDER TO SUCCEED.

Marketing is NOT just advertising. Marketing is everything you do to increase your customer base by taking business away from your competition. Marketing is convincing the customer base that they want and need what you sell. Marketing CAN include media advertising, but media advertising is just one tool, and probably the least important tool in the long-term. How you look and your cart looks, how good your food is, your location, door-knob hangers, supporting fund-raisers, going to businesses to give samples, putting flyers on cars in parking lots, towing your brightly decorated cart through neighborhoods, sending out PSA's to the media, joining the Chamber of Commerce and rubbing elbows with business leaders, handing out business cards with a coupon on the back giving a percentage off of the cost of the first purchase...... the list of things you can do to market your business is nearly endless.

Word of mouth is one type of marketing, but it can be inefficient. It can take YEARS for good word of mouth to overcome the inertia of being new, unknown, and having no reputation. This is a case of "If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, etc, etc". Well, if you have a great product and very few in your market know about it, what are your chances of success? Can you succeed in a market of 100,000? Abso-honking-hairy-lutely. And you can also fail in a market of 100,000. But a failure would not be because of the size of your market, it would be because the size of your marketing.

I can tell you the college bar crowd is a potential gold mine if you're willing to put up with drunken kids.

Iowa City, IA - University of Iowa, same thing. There's a pedestrian mall area of only 4 square blocks and probably 20+ bars within another block. During summer-fall there's a gyro cart Thurs-Sat from dinner to 2am. I have never walked by late on a weekend without seeing a college kid line at his cart. He sells gyros as fast as he puts them together, I've occasionally seen a helper at the cart trying to speed up the sales. I've seen a runner bringing back more onions and tomatos because he's blew through his supplies. He's been there for YEARS with this kind of non-stop college bar business. Push your food aroma out and the drunks will come.

If you're OK with 3rd shift hours and drunken clientel, the risk/reward is in your favor. Go for it.

Davebugg,
I'm a Small Business Consultant with 50 years of Sales & Marketing experience, (Started selling in 1958). I could not have said it any better than you just did. You are Dead Nuts On!!
MattS,
As part of your education and preparation, I suggest you get a copy of "The E Myth Revisited -Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work & What to Do About It" by Michael E. Gerber. It comes in Paperback and AudioBook. This will help you decide if you are REALLY cut out to be an Entrepreneur. There's a big difference between starting a business and being an Entrepreneur.
Here's another one: "The Guerrilla Marketing Handbook" by Jay Conrad Levinson, Charles Rubin, Seth Godin. Levinson has several books etc on Guerrilla Marketing. See: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?SID=271828.

Happy Reading and/or listening!

Thanks so much for the quick replies and kind words. Until this point, I hadn't given too much thought to marketing beyond coming up with some kind of uniform to wear and painting my cart bright red. I have already ordered my copies of the books you recommended. I also have a friend in Montreal who works as a graphic artist in hos own company. I think I'll have to talk to him about cart design, t-shirts, etc.

And regarding that gyro place in IA. It's funny you should mention that place, because I was on the phone with my sister the other night talking about this and she has eaten there as well.

OK im off to read!

Welcome MattS and nice post Davebugg.

I work the late night bar crowd about 4 nights a week in a town of about 50,000 people and it is a great gig. As others have said, putting up with the drunken idiots can occasionally be a pain in the neck, but that same drunkenness puts a nice dollar in your pocket.

Remember that drunken kids like BIG, so be sure in include something in the 1/4 lb range!

Be sure to make very nice with the bouncers and staff at the closest bar or two, that way if you do have any problems you have folks that have your back.

Once you develop a steady clientèle you'll see that even on the slowest of nights you'll be guaranteed a decent amount of business.

Good Luck.

quote:

Originally posted by MattS

Thanks so much for the quick replies and kind words. Until this point, I hadn't given too much thought to marketing beyond coming up with some kind of uniform to wear and painting my cart bright red. I have already ordered my copies of the books you recommended. I also have a friend in Montreal who works as a graphic artist in hos own company. I think I'll have to talk to him about cart design, t-shirts, etc.

And regarding that gyro place in IA. It's funny you should mention that place, because I was on the phone with my sister the other night talking about this and she has eaten there as well.

OK im off to read!

The Company you buy your cart from should also be able to give you some ideas on what colors and graphic designs work best.

I love your attitude! Keep going!!

Also check out:
www.score.org The Service Corps of Retired Executives. They have all kinds of stuff on managing your business as well as www.sba.gov Small Business Administration. All the info is FREE and FREE is really good for your cash flow!

quote:

Originally posted by Foodbme

Davebugg,
I'm a Small Business Consultant with 50 years of Sales & Marketing experience, (Started selling in 1958). I could not have said it any better than you just did. You are Dead Nuts On!!

Thanks Foodbme. I've learned my lessons by listening to folks like yourself, and by doing lots of reading and research.

good luck to you matt as you seem to be ready to embark on your new ventures....

concerning getting into the "college scene", how does one do that as i am in the metro west boston area, and just went to the local college here, and was told that they dont want me on their campus late at night as they already have a contract with a food service company and they dont want to interfere with that etc...so how does it work in iowa city or any other college place?

also, if one is to hang out at bars or nightclubs waiting to make sales there, isnt there usually food inside of the bars which would NOT be good for our business? thanx..

"also, if one is to hang out at bars or nightclubs waiting to make sales there, isnt there usually food inside of the bars which would NOT be good for our business? thanx.."



If you have a better product at a better price and friendly service, they will come,---eerr, stagger over!

The Iowa City bar scene(I lived there 11 years in the 80's-90's) is a couple blocks off campus, so the University has zero say in your operations. You just permit through the municipality like anywhere else.

Many College bars do have a food menu but being mostly bar, sales are light, kitchen operations shut down 9-10 PM and their late night clientel never went there to eat. If you're targeting this market, you're an impule sale to the throngs of party animals with a couple drinks too many in them exiting. Work the heck out of football weekends and catch the drunk alumni as well.

ok so it seems that you are all saying that even if you cant get ON campus, if one can get NEAR campus, and somehow get known that you have good quality and CHEAP eats available late night, one can make alot of money etc.....

quote:

Originally posted by trolleymass

ok so it seems that you are all saying that even if you cant get ON campus, if one can get NEAR campus, and somehow get known that you have good quality and CHEAP eats available late night, one can make alot of money etc.....

It's not that simple but you do improve your odds.

not that simple? please fill me in on anything that im missing..im new at this (as u can tell) and would love any advice on getting in on what seems like it should be a lucrative market..thanx..

I stopped by the health dept and the city clerk earlier today, and they game some info about the kinds of permits I will need. I'm on my way to being my own boss and I'm very excited about it.

Matt,

youve done a great job of presenting yourself here (you can tell by the intelligent answers you have gotten rather than everyone trailing off on some other direction)

best of luck to you, its a strange world you are entering...keep the faith.

quote:

Originally posted by trolleymass

not that simple? please fill me in on anything that im missing..im new at this (as u can tell) and would love any advice on getting in on what seems like it should be a lucrative market..thanx..

Anytime you plunk down $2 to $5k or more of your hard earned money to start a business that may or may not be successful, that automatically makes it "not that simple". Read My posts and Davebugg's posts to get what we're talking about. Running your own business is not for everyone. Should it be a lucrative market? Yes. WILL it be a lucrative market? Who knows until you try it. 60% of start up small businesses fail in the first year; the major reason being undercapitalization. 80% of startup small businesses are out of business in the 1st 5 years; the major reason being owner burnout. How many years of working until 2-3 AM dealing with Drunk Punks can someone put up with before you say NO MAS![|)] (Drunk Punks??? Sounds like a good name for a heavy metal band!)

Also, my mother always told me that nothing good ever happens after midnight. Just ask some multi-million dollar athletes and some potential multi-million dollar athletes if you don't believe it!

Hey all. Yesterday was a good day. After getting info from city hall and the health dept, I went downtown to watch the bar activity. I found 4 different locations that I think might work, although one stands out from the rest as being the best in my opinion. I also spent a little time talking to the bouncers of a few of the bars. I discovered that there are only 2 other restaurants downtown that stay open until bar close. One is a locally owned pizza by the slice place, and the other is a Jimmy Johns. I think the pie is big enough to share with only 2 others :P

Also, I spoke on the phone yesterday with chicagostyledog. He was very helpful. I think that by Spetember, I'll have all my ducks in a row, and that will leave me approx 6 months shoot them all.

Thanks again for your replies and encouragement. it is much appreciated.

I have read these books and they are great books. The ideas and techniques really work.

quote:

Originally posted by Foodbme

Davebugg,
I'm a Small Business Consultant with 50 years of Sales & Marketing experience, (Started selling in 1958). I could not have said it any better than you just did. You are Dead Nuts On!!
MattS,
As part of your education and preparation, I suggest you get a copy of "The E Myth Revisited -Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work & What to Do About It" by Michael E. Gerber. It comes in Paperback and AudioBook. This will help you decide if you are REALLY cut out to be an Entrepreneur. There's a big difference between starting a business and being an Entrepreneur.
Here's another one: "The Guerrilla Marketing Handbook" by Jay Conrad Levinson, Charles Rubin, Seth Godin. Levinson has several books etc on Guerrilla Marketing. See: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?SID=271828.

Happy Reading and/or listening!

I spent the last three weeks actually building my own cart. Starting just this week I was able to get started with business and it has been increasing steadily since I began. I live in a town of 75,000 and I am a second year University student majoring in business/comp. sci. There is very little competition in my town and I people are most definitely starting to take a liking to me. From 10:30-2:30 I am downtown and I sell about 3 dozen hot dogs and that number is increasing. Just today I started going to a call center around dinner time and I think I can manage to sell more than 3 dozen there. At my current state I am making about ~$120 profit a day and that is only four days in. Tomorrow I am going to hit up a bar and see what kind of cash I can make there.

That is awesome to hear tooniedogs. Would you be willing to post a little more information about how you got involved in the hot dog business? ie: what made you decide to do it, how long did it take you go from concept to reality, did you have help along the way and where did you get it?

Also, I'd like to hear what average day is like for you behind the cart. How long does it take you to set up and break down the cart, for example. Where is your base station. Basically since you are new to this business and I will be soon, I'd like you spill your guts.

Check your email Matt, my last post was deleted.