The A to Z Vendor Success Course is my most comprehensive course ever. Over the years I have learned some amazing things that can help you get started, help you find key locations, help you double your income and help you manage multiple carts. It’s jam packed with over 5 hours of professional vendor information. I have even helped experienced vendors with this information. It houses decades of experience I have learned from other vendors, learned by trial and error and just lucked up and figured out.

Whether you are just getting started or have been vending for years, this course is sure to offer you information that will take your business to the next level. No stone is left unturned as I walk you through start up, licensing, overcoming obstacles, avoiding pitfalls, valuable resources, the best locations on the planet (a comprehensive list)and other valuable information.

Includes:

• 11 Videos

• Sample Plan Reviews

• Vendor Check List

• Fast Start Course Notes

• Best Vendor Locations

FREE A TO Z COURSE – HOT DOG VENDOR TRAINING

Yes, it's absolutely FREE!  Over then next 7 weeks I will be delivering you 2 parts of the A to Z course right here on the LearnHotDogs.com blog.  Each week you'll get the next two parts.  This will give you time to absorb the information and apply it to your hot dog vending business.

If you just don't want to wait, I am giving a 50% discount off the pricing with this coupon code:  NOW   Simply click here and you can get it right now with no wait.  

Part One – A to Z Hot Dog Vendor Course

(Is street food vending for you?)     (How to find your state codes.)
Follow along in this video as Ben walks you step by step on how to become a hot dog vendor.  You can read the transcript of this episode below the video and also find the important links mentioned in the video.   Part Two will be released on Friday for those following along in real time.

Basically is this for you? Yes you can create an extremely good income. You can become as big as you want, or simply operate occasionally for extra income; but this is not some hyped up sales pitch that’s not what were doing here with this training session. Its not part of my “modus operandi” I don’t do the fancy guru sales pitches. I will tell you, you can make a lot of money in the hot dog vending business and were going to cover that tonight; and were going to cover what you can make and what the potentials are and the downfalls are, but I do want to make sure that you are self-motivated. Because if your not, you need to learn how to be if your going to be a success at this because and now a lot of people are motivated because they have a family to feed and they have bills to pay that’s all fine and well but some people are not cut out for this and that’s why everyone is not doing it, you go “if its that good then why isn’t everybody doing it” .

It's not for everybody that’s why everybody not a lawyer or a doctor you know a lot of us don’t want to go to school for 12 years after school. And so that’s what it comes down to and I don’t want to spend a lot of time on this but I just want to point out that anyone can do this PERIOD. Some of you may have to go through more red tape and stuff like that and you can’t be afraid of physical labor. Now obviously if you follow the blog at learnhotdogs.com I have shared some recent stories of older people, as far as people in their 60’s and 70’s and that are working and some of them don’t even work the cart. Some of them hire people. We had a lady Pam, I think, that we interviewed and she doesn’t work the cart somebody else does it for her. And she is able to do that. She has five employees already and she’s only been doing this a couple months now. So there are ways to do it but don’t be scared of the physical labor because your going to have to get out there and learn how to do it so you know how to manage it.

The second thing, really the third thing that you need to be good at, or learn to be good at is money management. Its crucial, because its easy to take in…you know you get paid from a job, they give you a check and you go ok I got three bills to pay, I’ll be able to pay these with this and this leave me with $100 left over and I’ll be able to go to the movies this weekend. But with this business your getting paid daily and your getting paid in cash.

I have seen vendors, and one recently, that spent their money as they made it. And they didn’t even have enough money to buy their product. I’m not going to mention names or anything, but it was a lady vendor and she spent it, she didn’t know how to manage her money. Some of you maybe fine with it, all of you may be fine with money management but I just want you to be aware of it so that you know that it isn’t like a free for all. You do have to go “ok I made $365 today, I did good today, I’m going to put this back for my cost of foods, cost of goods sold is what they call it, and I’m going to keep this for operating capital labor and then I’m going to pay myself” and it’s a good feeling for paying yourself. And you can go “man I worked four hours today I averaged, after I put money back for the company and after I paid for my expenses, after all of that I made $22 an hour. And for some of you as you do this more, you will get those numbers up further and further. So don’t be scared to ask for help if you have trouble-managing money. It may well be one of the wisest things you do for your business.

The next thing is to be good with people. You do not have to be a comedian you don’t have to be funny, funny, funny and everybody laughs at you and everybody cuts up at your jokes, but it does help.  So you want to make sure that your good with people; as long as your friendly and smile. You don’t have to joke and tease, but it does sometime help. Joking and teasing doesn’t affect your success but you do have to be a people person. Be kind; don’t be looking at the ground when they are telling you what they want to eat. Be confident and that shows through.

The last is “this is still a job”, the difference is that you OWN this job, rather than it owning you.  I’m not some power speaker that just makes you feel like a million dollars and you walk out of the meeting that cost you $300 which makes you feel like you can own the world, the only thing stopping me is just doing such and such is, well I’m not that person.  I’m always going to tell you there are negatives to this. The negatives are cleaning, learning how to manage money, going through the red tape, some of you will fight this more than others but all of it is doable. Every one of you is capable of doing it.  And so there is no maybe about it, there is no can I do it, it is a definite you can do it.

There is nothing between you and success as a hotdog vendor except air and opportunity and those are the facts. There is nothing stopping you. I want you to succeed and I’m going to watch you succeed. If you decide to do this business you are going to be happy, you’ll  be a happier person.

It saved my life, literally.

First things first, there are always first things and as I’ve done this over the years I’ve learned more and more, as you can imagine. For you this is a benefit because it will save you many steps. I didn’t create all these fancy cool ways to make money in the hotdog business, I did some, some of them I did stumble upon, some of them I did by trial and error, and some of them I’ve learned from other vendors. So you get access to all of that, you get a lot of information and it’s packed in there. One of the valuable lessons that I have learned, and believe you me I get a lot of calls almost daily, ok almost daily; from somebody that says I bought a cart and they said I can’t vend here and how about this one “I bought a cart and they don’t allow these kind of carts here and I needed a double boiler not a single boiler, or I need sinks and this one doesn’t have any sinks” or whatever it is. Some states are anal about it, for an example, in Florida, you can only have one sink on an open cart and yes I have sent and shipped carts with four sinks and some of them have been approved. Recently I sent one to Florida, in the panhandle, and I told the guy “listen they are not going to approve this it has four sinks, they don’t want four sinks they want one sink” he said he talked to his health department and they said he could have four sinks. Well he got it there and they didn’t approve it, turns out he didn’t talk to the health department. I asked him for the guys name and he didn’t do it, so he just got in a hurry. So I’m going to show you some stuff as your getting started to make sure you doing this the right way right from the beginning. So you don’t have any hiccups that aren’t known. I don’t like surprises especially bad ones, so I’m going to help you avoid those. If you’ll follow these you’ll be a lot safer.

Before we get out there looking at carts and designing our new logo and menus and seeing if our cool hot dog business name is available, those things are ok but don’t get the cart before the horse so to speak, or the hotdog before the cart. What you want to do is check the rules. We need to find the local and state codes and make sure we can vend the way we want to. There’s always a way, you’ve hear the old saying that “if there’s a will there’s a way” there’s always a way, but sometimes that way may be outside of your comfort zone and you know I don’t’ want to do this now. I’d much rather you make that decision now instead of spending 3K or 2K or even a thousand on a cart and you decide you don’t want to use it because it has to be used a certain way. And so that will help resolve that issue.

I need to know. Who out there? I didn’t take a poll but we are going to pick a state to show y’all how to look up codes and rules and stuff. Based on one that y’all are looking for.

Lets look up some state codes and then well go from there. I want to point out two things first when you “Google” hotdog vendor Virginia there are two things that should be pointed out if you notice the catchy titles here these are called S-E-O titles and it can make you go to the page. If you look at the Virginia Hot Dog Cart licensing, county, state rules and regulations if you were looking around at these different websites some of these have no relation and will not help you. Some of them will not help you, look and see where they are coming from some of them are coming from consumer based magazines, just X them out. So what we will be looking for are ones that actually have stuff that may show, if you notice “dream maker hot dog carts” has a resources page that show Virginia and that is awesome. Here is a hot dog cart manufacture that has put up a resources page for vendors that they will be able to find, and it has all 50 states on there. http://www.dreammakerhotdogcarts.com/online-resources

Lets check that out. I’m going to click on it and it.. It has every county listed. So this will make life easier. Lets click on Virginia Beach.  And from here we see that we are at the dept. of public health. Lets try a search we will put in hot dog cart, usually that won’t. Ok look it pulled up a PDF if you notice if is showing a mobile food unit operation guide, and I don’t know if it will have the codes. Lets click on it and it does it gives you everything, the classes, types, plan review such and such. http://www.vdh.virginia.gov/lhd/Hampton/documents/pdf/Mobile%20Unit%20Guidelines.pdf

For those in Virginia Beach or VA period it should be uniform across the state. I’m going to get out of that and I’m going to dream makers. And go to their resources if you notice it has a map of the state. If you click on the state it will take you to the states code.

Here is my tip for you… when you are doing your searches online for your codes make sure that you try different wording. Here is the biggest thing I can tell you put health dept. restaurant inspection. If you put that in there 9 out of 10 times it will pull up something from the state in the search boxes to find the right codes from your state. So if you type in restaurant inspections or restaurant licensing you will be pulling up a lot more information because your going to be tying into the same people that inspect you also inspect restaurants. And everybody calls hot dog cart, or street vendor, or food concessionaire or whatever, because I’ve dealt with all 50 states they all call it something different. So it’s hard to find on a search, so you end up going on these wild goose chases, so if you look up “Restaurant inspection” you’ll always almost find it.

Now that doesn’t solve all our problems, now we are ahead a little bit. Once you get a copy of those rules and copy them you now have a copy of a new foreign language. Because what they write these rules in is “Legalese” which is similar to Chinese or Pekinese or any of those foreign languages. So its hard to understand, even if you are proficient, even if you are excellent and you can follow that “Legalese” its still your interpretation of the rules. We have a supreme court in this state because people are still arguing about what our founding fathers meant by such and such in the constitution or the bill of rights. So it really doesn’t matter, once you have them, the reason I want you to have the rules is so that you are able to gain access to verify what you hear from the inspector.

Now the next thing you’ll want to do, if you cannot find your local inspector, is to contact the state. Simply type in “department of environment, some are health” in states like NC its called DHEC depart health environment or something. So you’ll want to call the state, because they work for you, don’t be ashamed or embarrassed just tell them you are trying to get something started and you need to know who to contact in my area who will be doing the inspection. They will be able to get you that information. If you have any trouble let me know and I will help you. If you will contact me I will try to help you if you need help in finding the right information or the right person.

Go to part 2 for information on starting a street food business – state, county, and local health codes now.