I'm going to show you how to get a hot dog cart at Lowes and Home Depot. Before you rush off all willy-nilly – be sure to understand the pros and cons as there are – in my opinion – more CONS than pros.

How to get your hot dog cart at Lowes and Home Depot

HOW TO VEND AT LOWES

Or Home Depot… Check out this hot dog vendor cart critique for some great insights in how to and how NOT to vend at Home Depot or Lowes.

Video Transcript:

Welcome Message…

Well, good morning. Howdy! Howdy! Howdy! Folks. It is a beautiful morning here in the mountains. Look at that river behind me. Got The fire pit going. It's chilly. Cold. I think it's about 37 degrees. It's why I got my noggin warmer on and um, get this computer to straighten up here. Anyway, I'm going to give a little bit of time for people to get here. I want to talk to you about, um, vending at home depot and lowe's. Been getting a lot of questions. Hey Nick, glad you're here. And, but before I do that, before I go into the home depot and Lowe's, I want to give some time for people to get here. I see we got several. I'm matt. How you doing brother? Thanks. Thank you all for being here. And um,

[00:49] how's it going nick? It's going good. It's going good. All right. Um, let's see here. Um, look here. I want to show you something pretty. Got The fire going. It's about 37 degrees. There's the river behind me. Um, well I call it a river or creek. Um, got my noggin warmer and I'm happy to be here. Monster Burgers. Checkout Garrett here from Dublin, Ireland. I'm Jim Smith and a house. Thanks for being here Jim. Um, so I want to talk about home depot and Lowe's. I've been getting a lot of questions. Got Several overnight last night. And then I got up this morning. There was two on youtube comments and one on my ass ben page and I was like, good grief. What's the deal with Lowe's and home depot to. Is there a rush on getting vendors there? And I've talked about this before but I want to update it.

Winter Vending

[01:42] Um, because they've made some updates. Well here's the deal. I hate paying for. I'm paying for a location and let me, you know what j d, You just brought up something I wanted to bring up real quick. I'm jd just brought up winter vending and it being cold and it is cold. Okay. And for a lot of people it's cold and just talking to a vendor this morning, like 7:00 AM in Florida and they got a cold front. They're like down to 80 or something and they're freezing. They had to, you know, put socks on before they put the flip flops on. But if you go over to learn hot dogs.com, just go to [inaudible] dot com. You'll see it. The, I'm on the front page there, I update that with new articles and I just did a brand new one on hot dog vending in the winter and how to make money with it even without a cart.

[02:34] Okay. Um, some cool people doing some amazing stuff in the winter. Um, even just coffee. Um, w what do you see it? It's called hot dog vending in the winter or what? Check that article out. I've got coffee from your hot dog cart right below that. Um, and then I, I did an update it how to build a portable concession sink people or do art and they need to have a concession sink if their state requires. And so I show you how to build one quick, cheap, easy. Okay. Um, and then I did an article called the red and blue pill. If you got some time it's worth the read. And check it out as well. Um, let me go back over here. Um, yeah. Cold, cold weather equals dollars. Get those onions fried. Exactly. Smells good. Comfort foods do fantastic. But enough about the winter.

Lowes & Home Depot – The Cost To Vend

[03:27] Let me tell you, let me tell you why I'm here in case you just joined us. I'm going to be talking about the vending at Lowe's and home depot. A lot of questions about it. And people are, you know, it's, it's the obvious choice. It's like Walmart, you know, you're like, how do I get that location? I want to have lowe's or home depot and you know, if you all followed me for very long, you saw me about, uh, it's been about nine, 10 years ago now. I interviewed a vendor in surprise, Arizona. Okay. I went out there as Oana and filmed, her name was Jackie and she had been vending 14 years at the home depot and, and she, this and I'll go into more of this in a minute, but she made a lot of money. Okay. And she moved to Florida now.

[04:13] Um, but the, it is, it is a wise idea. Okay. The idea, the concept of working, but I hate paying for a location. Well, why would you have to pay? Right? Because a lot of people like me, I went to my lowe's or home depot and said, hey, it was actually my lows and said, hey, oh, you know, um, how would you like it if we set up our car here? And they were like, yeah, we'd love it. And then the district manager comes by a couple months later. It's like a, you can't do, you have, um, you have the deal for being here. We have a company that manages this. Now what's happened is lowe's and home depot and in the vending business, okay. The managers love to have a vendor there. Most of the time they love it. The problem comes in is that lowe's and home depot don't have time to deal with it.

[05:03] So what they do is hire a third party company. That third party company used to be known as street eats and you can find their website it streets, but it's spelled s, t, r e a t, s.net. And I've referred people to that for years. They are a pain in the ass. Okay. To put it bluntly, they're a pain in the ass to deal with. They'll won't answer your phone call. They don't answer emails. Hardly ever. They're horrible. Which is more to my point about this, but the key point is they charge. They charge a fee. How do they set those fees? They base it on what they think the store's volume is, but they won't tell you that information. They won't tell you what the store's volume is. They'll just say at least at least all the vendors I've talked to recently that have missed with streets and I'll tell you how to find them here in a minute because they've changed their name.

The 3rd Party Company – Getting Your Money

[05:55] That's called best vendors.com. If you go to best vendors.com, they are management consortium of some sort who literally do nothing for you other than charge you a fee. And a lot of them will start their fee out high. So if you decide, you know what Ben, it's worth it to me. I'll, I'll want to lowe's or home depot. I think I could kill it and you might, you might do really good. They're going to give you a price once you apply to $50 I think to apply and then they're going to give you all these rules that you have to agree to uniforms. You have to be there seven days a week and I'm going to go into that a little more. I'm not trying to scare you. I'm going to go into how you get around all that and, and they're going to have all these rules. I mean a whole list of rules and you will pay. Okay. Um, I think I have. Yeah, I'm going to put that off for there. I'm sorry I was blocking the page there. So you were going to pay for a fee to them, to them best vendors. Now how much is the fee? I've seen it as high as 1500, $2,000. My fire just fell. I just heard it. Look at that. It just fell over. But isn't that beautiful? Um, cold morning though. Cope. Um, so anyway,

[07:17] um, the,

[07:20] they may charge you $1,500. You can negotiate with them, you can't, they don't like you to. They don't even like you to know that you could and you can say, listen, I'll do it on a trial basis at $400 a month, but they're going to have all these rules that you have to agree to. You can't negotiate the rules, but here's what I will tell you. You'll never see them. I personally spoke with Jackie in an interview. I was there in person with her in 14 years. She never saw them. They don't come. They don't have the staff to come. Okay, and unless something recently changed, all they're in it for the money. They collect the money and then tell you, yes, you can go in there and send them a check every month. Okay, and I want you to sign a contract. That contract has all those rules, but they ain't chicken.

THEY WON'T CHECK IN ON YOU

[08:09] They're not checking. I've never heard of a vendor being checked by street eats. Now when you go to best vendors.com, if you go up to the top, to the services, you'll click it and it a scroll down to the bottom and it says, it says st eats and that's their lowe's home depot. If you'll notice on their site, no phone number, even though they say 24 hour customer service, blah, blah, blah. They don't have any of that. Okay. Um, it, it's a nightmare to deal with them. It will be a process. They heard one of my videos where I was ranting about them one time and they contacted me and said, hey, we would like to discuss this with you. We've changed things up now and we beloved to discuss it with you. And I said, that'd be great. We can do a live video, you know, we can do a live show.

[08:53] And they said, yeah, we do that. And I said, well, let's do it. Never heard from him again. Never heard from him again. And I wouldn't want to like, you know, do some kind of Gotcha media deal. I'm not a reporter. I was just going to express my concerns. And then talk with them, but they, they, they literally just have figured out a way to make money off of you working. So let's say that you did a deal with them for $500, that $500 in profit, right? That's 500 of your profit that you're going to have to pay them before you make a dime. It may be $1,500 a month. Now is it worth it? Yes. I've got vendors, I know vendors who are doing seven to $10,000 a month, that'll lowe's and home depot. So yes, it's worth it. Yes, you can make money with it, but it's not, it's.

I'M A TAD BIASED

[09:47] I never suggest it to a new vendor. Number two, there's so many better locations. And if you go over to the blog@learnedhotdogs.com, you'll see a list of those locations. You'll see a list of those locations. I want to put something up on the screen, I need to put a title problem. Um, get lowe's and home depot location right there. How's that? Um, but it should say don't get lowe's and home depot locations. I'm against. It. Can you tell I'm a little biased. I've talked to thousands of vendors. I've had vendors try it and hate it. I've had vendors go to lowe's and home depot and not do well sometimes that was they're doing and we fix those problems and they still didn't do well, so we knew that it had to do with, with the location, not a good location. Sometimes Lowe's and home depot may put you at an end of the building that does not have any traffic, so you want to ensure that you get a location either coming in or going out, you want to be at the exit doors or whatever I like and I found the best results to be at the contractor entrance.

[11:03] That has been the best, but some contractor entrances are in the back where nobody sees you except the contractor. So you don't pick up any extra customers. If that's the case, don't go there. Go to the front of the building and at least the contractors to see when they drive through the parking lot. So you want to keep those things in mind. Um, let me make sure I don't forget anything. I'll need to take a sip of my Diet Pepsi and then I'm going to go to your questions. If you've got any questions about lowe's and home depot, I'll help you out with it. It is a viable opportunity. It is a challenge though and I never recommend it. The people, I never recommend lowe's and home depot, but I will tell you some something that I did come up with it. We'll, we'll get you in there without using the company.

THERE ARE BETTER LOCATIONS

Want the best locations for free? 

[11:55] So

[11:56] I made a course, um, if course updated it this year and it's a how to get any location you want and so you can get any location you want and, and if you want that, if you want to see what that's about. Goto. Let me type this in real quick. Let's see.

[12:21] And a nine to nine. Let's see. http://Learnhotdogs.com/location. Okay. Now this is a paid course, but there's tons of free information to just learn hotdogs.com and type in the word location in the search box. I've got tons. I've got over 20 articles, at least 20 articles just on just on location, getting okay with, with Lowe's and home depot. I've got over 150 articles on locations period so I can help you with locations without you buying anything. But this, this course learn hot dogs.com, forward slash location. That's a course and that course has some secrets in it. You'll see why I don't give that out. Um, because there's people that will take advantage of it. I'm in a bad way and it hurt us all because it's a way to get in front of Lowe's, Home Depot, Walmart for free without having to go through another company. Um, so, um,

YOUR QUESTIONS…

[13:26] here, here's a question about lowe's home depot, if you got a question about lowe's and home depot, get into the other questions in a minute, but I want to do those first. Um, um, let's see, where did that question go? Do New Lowe's and home depot dictate your pricing. The company, not them. The company, um, best vendors.com. Best vendors.com has a street. Each department, that's their lowe's home depot department. They determine the pricing and they base that off of the volume of the store does, but they will not share that with you. They'll just tell you, oh, that's one of the best stores in America. That's one of the busiest. You're going to need to pay us. Seventeen 50 a month. Okay. So, Hey Darrell, glad you're here. This is in the house. Um, so let me go. Let me go through here. If you've got a question about lowe's and Home Depot, let me answer those first and then I'll go off on any tangent you want. Um, let's see. I love this. Garrett. Put Up. Um,

[14:34] look, Rick just proved my point. Okay. Or are solidified my point. I said in the beginning of this, um, today I said comfort foods work better in the winter and I tell you how to Vin those. Um, I've got an article over on the blog. It's right near the top. Go to [inaudible] dot com. Scroll down a little bit. You'll see it winter vending or not, or what? And it talks about comfort foods. He says, my Chili is out my dogs on colder days it will. I've got vendors that have found that their coffee out sold their dogs. I'm not. The dogs don't still sell it. Still brings them in, but they, they, they get two cups of coffee. Alright. Um, I'm 40 miles south of the Canadian border. I'm thinking taking a permit spot down Washington and covering my cart with Costco car port and a big propane heater.

[15:20] That absolutely works. John. Um, it does. We have vendors doing it. We have vendors in Canada who are vending now in the cold weather, the brutally cold weather. We got a shift there that left his professional chef career and started vending and he's got blow heaters to propane heaters. Um, let's see, um, Johnny Depp town dogs in the house. Thanks for being here. Um, let's see, David, thanks for being here. Um, look, Jeanette's I'm from brewster. Absolutely. Just completed my first month working weekends at a haunted house in Michigan. Eight day 17, 75 kicked, but mike kicked butt. That's freaking awesome. Congratulations to you. We've got some vendors. I had some vendors call me this weekend, we did a show on vendors united last night, but some vendors that we talked about this, but we had some vendors that made thousands of dollars this weekend at the corn mazes. I mean, unbelievable the money that vendors are making during the fall and winter.

YOUR COMMENTS

[16:25] Um, let's see. Um, let's see, I already answered that. Mic Pack. Grosser net. I'm Dan. I don't know Dan. I'm not sure what you mean by gross or net if you're talking about with Lowe's and home depot does, you're not going to find those numbers from them, from the company van. Um, best vendors.com is where you'd go to find the street, each section. Then you have to fill out an online form and then they'll charge you a $50 bucks. I think it is for the application before they'll even tell you the price of the location. And then they were a nightmare to get a hold of. And it's a nightmare. I think they have too many chiefs and not enough Indians and they probably, it's probably a two person operation. Um, I mean literally they're horrible, horrible to deal with them.

[17:16] Um,

[17:18] we were located selling coffee and dogs all week, kettle corn, um, Saturdays, just all five, five and Tacoma Smack Dab right in front of 72nd street. Home Depot for years and deal we made was I had to pressure wash the whole sidewalk in front of the store every Sunday night. Lol. We did great. John Martin, that's a great, a great plan right there. Um, my goals in the house. Um, thanks for being here Michael. I'm just linked the deal for a grand opening where the company is paying all at once. So I'll be doing. Is serving food already paid for a holiday festival, launching at an auto auction. Will be there every Wednesday if all goes well. Nick Ramsey, that's freaking awesome. Um, you know, Frankenstein's over the mountain. He did. He just did a location where it was a company picnic type deal, fall festival, family day or something.

[18:06] And they had, they pre bought 500 needles. He, he took both carts, his cash cow and his big dog and his wife ran one. He ran the other. They only ate about 200 mils that left him when he got paid for 500 and left him with 300 mills, so he got to use those the following week at his location because he hadn't cooked them yet or done nothing. And, and so he got the, he got paid twice on his meals. It's great. Um, if you want to know what Nick's talking about, that's catering and it's not the kind of catering you're thinking of. Um, go to learn hot dogs.com and type in the word catering. I'm in the search box. Go ahead and call this live stream. In the process of getting started over a busy, profitable stand, um, started taking over a busy, profitable standing.

VENDING AT LOWES AND HOME DEPOT

[18:51] Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Um, but that's it. Lowe's and home depot. Let me sum this up for you. And just in case you just got here. Okay. Let me sum up, um, and I'm going to put that location. Somebody asked about to put that back up. Um, so, um, lowe's and home depot almost sum it up for you, is managed by a third party. That third party is horrible to deal with. Poor customer service, poor everything. They will charge you a fee to be there. You can negotiate the fee. They will have all these rules that you have to agree to apply. You know, they'll ask you. I've had new vendors call me up being um, street eats is telling me street eats is the, the old man for best vendors. Okay. Street eats is telling me that I have to have been in business for five years.

[19:41] Just put that you were, that it didn't say how long have you been in the restaurant? How long, how much experience do you have in the restaurant business? And, and, and it has say, you know, you fill in the blank, we'll put five years or 20 years or however long you've been alive because you've probably been to a restaurant over your life. And that would mean that you have experience with the restaurants, right? Um, it's a play on words, but it'll work. They do not really care. Here's why they pitched that. I believe this is my opinion. Okay? This is my opinion. I believe they put those rules in place so they can show corporate, home depot and corporate logos. Hey guys, look here, look at all this. We require of them all this stuff that we make them. Do we have a schedule? We find out if they have experience, we make him have their uniform and it's all bullshit. Okay. It's complete horseshit it. They don't check none of that crap. They don't care about it. All they care about is the money. They just want the money. And as soon as home depot and lowe's figures out, there'll be okay. If one of y'all wants to start a business, compete with street eats, contact corporate lowe's and Home Depot. I'll pitch you if you're a good company because I have never had any luck with them.

[21:00] Um,

[21:03] there's Jeanette, she says rural King, Ag Supply Co op tractor supply. There's tons of that that you can do. I've done bass pro, Gander Mountain, all those do good.

[21:17] Um,

[21:20] yeah. John says, the one thing I've learned watching all your videos, if you have a will, there's way. Thank you. You're welcome. John. Thank you for saying so. Um,

[21:29] look at this, John j Dot d says my cart and myself will be in costume for Halloween, make an extra Chile for the cold plan on killing it with Halloween. Big money abso-freaking-lutely. And keep in mind I'm going to do another video later. Not Today, but there's a lot of stuff coming. You Got Black Friday events where we had a vendor make over 20 grand in three days at a black Friday event from a hot dog cart. He froze his butt off. He even camped out with a tent. He did the whole black Friday event. Made over 20 grand.

[22:04] Um,

[22:05] thank you matt. Matthew, thank you. A bunch. Um, anyway, that's it. I want to, I'll leave it there. I hope that helps. You have summed up Lowe's, home depot. I gave you my two cents. If you pursue it, there's ways to pursue it. There's tips and tricks with it. You can do it. Um, I love you. Hope you have a great freaking day and stay warm.