Hot Dog University

Here is a story about a CBS news correspondent who went to check out Hot Dog University. This video offers some insight into how to start a hot dog business.

Hot Dogs for the Homeless

This is a truly heartwarming story about a guy who changes people's lives with hot dogs. This Hotdogman has his priorities straight!

The Hotdogman on TV

Nearly a year later, the Hotdogman's TV appearance is available online! Enjoy.



And when you're done with the Hotdogman, watch Dom, the goalie and birdman....

The Hot Dog Man, and the Recession

I have read this little story many times over the years. I found it at the Network for Growth the other day. It is an especially poignant story considering the times we find ourselves in.

Once upon a time, there was a good man, who had worked hard all his life. He disliked his work. It was not rewarding. His boss was never happy. But he worked hard. Until, one day, this man decided he had had enough, and he quit.

He just walked out. He went home and told his wife. She cried.

How are we going to send our boy to college”, she asked? The man thought for a minute and then said, “I will think of something”. After a while, he decided to do something he has always wanted to do. He would sell hot dogs on the street corner from a little hot dog cart on wheels.

He took his savings and bought a hot dog cart. His friends were not too sure about this. But the hot dog man started selling hot dogs on the street corner, in his hometown. They were good hot dogs. Best quality. Not cheap, but he charged enough to pay for them. Things went pretty well right from the beginning

People liked his hot dogs. He always made sure to have plenty of fresh ketchup and mustard and onions. Every customer got a smile with their hot dog.

He did very well, and soon more people wanted his hot dogs. More than he could serve. So he bought another hot dog cart. His son pushed the new cart. He made good hot dogs too.

And every one of the Son's customers got a smile and a thank you to go with their hot dog. The hot dog man made sure to teach his son about this. The two did well, and saved the money they made, until it was time for the boy to go to college. There was enough money to send him to school even if the hot dog man paid another young man to push the second cart.

“Give them a smile with every hot dog,” he told his first employee. It worked fine.

This gave him an idea. He bought a third cart and hired a second employee.

Every year the city grew and every year he added a few more carts. The hot dog man’s company did very well. Buns and dogs were coming in bigger trucks these days. He was glad the son decided to study business in college. Their hot dog company was hiring more and more people and getting bigger and bigger. It would be great when the son returned home with all that college education to help him manage it.

The big day finally arrived. The son came home from college. Dad was excited. Mom too. There was a BIG Party. Everybody came.

Then it was time to get to work. But the son was not interested in working in the hot dog company. He wanted to do something more grand. The hot dog man was sad.

But then he asked, “Can you just look over our books and give me some advice?”

“Sure”, said the son, while looking at his watch.

“Things are going pretty good”, said the hot dog man. He got the books and paperwork out to proudly show the son what they had become while he was gone.

The son looked things over and thought for a minute. Then he said, “Gee, Dad, you have an awful lot of hot dog carts. And Expenses.”

Then he asked, “Don’t you know a Recession is coming?”. The hot dog man did not know what a Recession was, so he asked.

The son explained what he had learned in college about Recessions. The hot dog man shook his head in amazement.

He thought things were OK, but his son was just out of college. The hot dog man had worked a lot of hours to pay for that college education. He thought surely the college people knew more about business than he did, so he listened.

The son said, maybe you should mothball a few carts this season…

So that is what the hot dog man did. After a month or so, sales were down.

The son and the hot dog man looked things over again. The son said they should cut advertising expenses a little.

The hot dog man was sure the son must know about these things, So that is what they did. Sure enough, sales went down.

A few months later the books were worse. The Son said profits were being squeezed by the Recession. He said they should buy a cheaper hot dog. Save a little money. So they did. Sure enough, Sales went down.

After a while the son looked again at the books. Again. He said, “Gee Dad, you’re not making much money. Maybe you should cut payroll a little. So they laid off a few employees. The ones who stayed on were not too sure what would happen next. They stopped giving a smile with every hot dog. And sales went down even more.

Things were gloomy until the hot dog man had a great idea. He called all his employees together. Even the ones that had been let go. He told them something like this. "Sometimes things are easy and sometimes things are hard. It's easy to lose your way when things are hard." He admitted that he had been scared by this recession.

Then he went on. "Things have been hard lately. BUT, we are going to go back to doing what worked before. We will buy a better hot dog. We will run a few ads. We will get all the carts out of storage. And everybody will have a job. I don't care what it costs." Only one thing", he added, "Ya gotta give every customer a smile with their hot dog". They promised they would. And so they did.

Sure enough... sales went up.

And they keep going up to this very day.

ROADSIDE STORIES!

The day is finally here when the Hot Dog Truck makes its broadcast television debut! This episode of Roadside Stories was filmed way back in June of 2008 and it will be airing 12/29/2008 @ 8:00 PM on New Hampshire PBS Channel 11. Here's the program description:

Rob is part psychologist, part story teller and all chef. We stop at his hotdog truck in Marlborough, MA, for lunch and end up finding more than a meal. While eating a few dogs, host Bob Wilson meets Dom, an engineer by day, a hockey goalie at night.

Make sure you tune in tonight. I'll have the episode linked and embedded in a couple of weeks.

Enjoy the show.

Hotdogman on TV (Finally)

Last spring, Bob Wilson from the TV show Roadside Stories visited with me. I documented his visit with this post. All summer I waited to hear when the show would air and he FINALLY called me last week.

The show is going to air December 29! Check your local TV listings!

I will also have a full version of the episode one this website.

Don't touch that dial!

More Inspiration!

I told you all about the guy from New York who said I was his hero last week.

Here's an email I got while away for the 4th of July Weekend:

"just wanted to put a shout out to you. My name is Jim and We Started
our business 2 months ago and we are doing well already. Here are
some pics of our truck. Thanks for being a good resource for some
info. call sometime or visit if you are ever down in Florida."

He sent a TON of pictures, here are a few:





SWEET rig, Jim! It looks brand spankin new on the inside.

I'll be sure to stop by Boxer Dogs when in the area.

I am glad to be an inspiration to hot dog men and women EVERYWHERE!

I'm his HERO!

A guy pulled up to the Hot Dog Truck today with New York plates and announced that I was his hero!

He's been reading my site and he wants to be a hotdogman someday too. The cool thing was he and his wife were traveling from New York to Maine and went out of their way to stop by.

His ride was neat too. He had a Mercedes station wagon converted to run on waste vegetable oil. More and more alternative fueled vehicles are coming into vogue these days. Waste vegetable oil is a cheap and readily available source of fuel.

He wants to get big fryolaters on his Hot Dog Truck so he can "make" his own free fuel. What a great idea.

I am glad I can be an inspiration to hot dog men and women the world over and I look forward to hearing this guy's story!

The Mortgage Man

THIS IS A SPONSORED POST

Everyone wants to know more about mortgages. I was a Mortgage Broker before becoming a Hot Dog Man, so I know a little bit about the subject!

It is a wacky business with a great many "shady operators." Many of the loose lending practices of the previous five years or so are creating ugly situations for many homeowners who cannot afford the payments on their mortgages. There were a great many companies who offered and wrote mortgages to people who merely needed to prove they had a pulse to get a loan. The result is a lot of bad loans, foreclosures and heightened regulations for the lending industry.

When I started in the business home values were increasing and interest rates were falling and they eventually hit all-time lows. Many people were looking to remortgage their home to take advantage of lower rates and to pull cash out of their homes. I was making money just by sitting around the office. Walk-ins were common and just about anyone who owned a home refinanced their home.

While this boom in refinancing was going on, I managed to carve out a comfortable niche in the "Jumbo Loan" market- mortgages for people who needed to borrow over $300,000 (the limit kept rising with rising home prices). I dealt primarily with refinancing existing mortgages and providing mortgages to people buying million dollar homes (a market which is very thin right now.

Some of my collegues devoted their energies to bad credit risk customers who needed secured loans to get out of mounting credit card and other consumer debt. That was never a market that interested me personally, but many of the lenders payed good commissions and were fast and loose with their underwriting policies. There were even wholesale reps from lenders who "encouraged" fraud to get deals approved! Like I said before, it was a shady business.

Compared to being a mortgage broker, being a Hot Dog Man is much more fun and a lot less shady!

Interview with the Hot Dog Man

I read a LOT. Books, magazines, websites and blogs. When I'm blog surfing I leave comments and I get responses to comments I forget even making!

This post is a result of one of those comments. Her Highness Queen E. Carlie had this interview game going on her blog. I come across her blog a lot in Battle of the Blogs and I usually give it a read 'cuz she's a good writer (I skip the "girly" stuff). So she sends me these questions that I am supposed to answer. Here they are, with the answers:

1. (I've been wondering this for a while, actually.) Where I come from, no hot dog man would ever get away with not serving veggie hot dogs. While I haven't scoured your menu, I've never noticed them listed there. Is there just no demand in your parts?
I have had 2 people ask for veggie dogs in 2 1/2 years! My personal thoughts are that if you are going to have a hot dog , HAVE A HOT DOG. Every veggie dog I have ever tried has sucked BIG TIME. I suppose if a lot of people were asking for them all the time, I'd have some in the fridge, but just about everyone I know thinks they suck too-even my vegetarian daughter. Besides, I have a sign at my truck that says "we have no rabbit food here" and veggie dogs border on rabbit food, so as a matter of policy I wouldn't have them. I do have a veggie wrap however:



2. Tell me one invention you wish you could have been credited with.
My best friend's grandfather invented the machine that makes Thomas' English Muffins have that "fork split" slice when you cut them in half. I like Thomas' English Muffins, always have since as far back as I can remember. I always thought it was cool to have invented something like that. They called my friend's grandfather (appropriately) "the Muffin Man." He had a great beach house and a place in Florida and he always drove a new car with vanity plates that read "MUFFIN" (he was partial to the Oldsmobile Cutlass-a dream car for my generation when we were young-that made him an extra cool grandpa). The summer before my senior year of high school, he gave us the keys to his white Cutlass and asked my friend and me to drive it to Florida to switch it with his Black Cutlass. He gave us the keys to both cars, a Mobil Credit Card and a few bucks and off we went. It was a fantastic trip punctuated by my first para-sailing experience, my first trip to a bar (in Daytona Beach), a trip to Disney World (so cool being there with NO PARENTS) and a rather unpleasant experiment with "Sun In" hair lightener that left my hair orange and my friend's hair a yellowish green. When we got home, I had another friend's mom dye my hair back to black!

Now I'm not sure if I'd want to steal my friend's grandfather's invention. He was a very nice man and I wouldn't want to take his livelihood from him. I'd also be concerned about upsetting the space/time continuum and having that very amazing road trip erased from my memory. My answer to this one would be something similar to the Thomas' English Muffin fork slicing machine: obscure enough that I could maintain a "normal" life, cool enough to make people say "wow, that's pretty cool" when I tell them what I invented, useful (what would my life have been like without those "nooks and crannies"), and profitable so I could afford to hand the keys to two new cars and a credit card to a couple of knucklehead teenagers and not lose sleep over it while I sail around in my luxury yatch.

Anything I may invent will probably be hot dog related. If someone walks up to my truck and wants to license one of my toppings, I am all over it!

3. What is one thing you wish you could change about the blogging community?
Two things:

The first thing I would do is ban anonymous comments. It really frosts me when someone has a strong opinion and they are being critical about something yet they don't have the GUTS to attach their name to their comment. I refuse to publish anonymous comments for certain posts. If you don't want anyone to know what you say, then don't say it!

The second thing I'd change is I'd make The Hot Dog Truck mandatory reading for anyone with a blog (that would undoubtedly boost my readership).

4. Which comic book character (hero or villain) do you most identify with? Why?
I'd say Superman for some obvious reasons: he can fly, he is super strong, he's got x-ray vision and he's chummy with Wonder Woman who is a total babe. The early Superman of my youth didn't have all the angst displayed by more contemporary superheroes. If I was a super hero, I wouldn't want any hang-ups.

My other choice would be Johnny Storm, the Human Torch. His youthful persona and playboy life style coupled with the ability to burst into flames and fly appeal to me.

5. List a couple of things that you are stubborn about no matter how hard you try not to be.
I am stubborn about a great many things and I enjoy being stubborn about the things I deem important enough to be stubborn about. So I guess I don't try too hard to not be stubborn about certain stuff. Therefore, I am not doing anything to be less stubborn-not even contemplating about it. Period. End of discussion.

Whew. That was a fun interview!

Now it’s YOUR turn to play:

1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by asking you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your weblog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.