From Diner’s Journal by Kim Severso
If we need more signs of how bad it is out there for cooks, let’s turn to the Hot Dog Indicator.
Larry Bain and Sue Moore, who run hot dog carts in San Francisco and Los Angeles, were looking for some part time help. Now mind you, their “Let’s Be Frank” carts are up the culinary scale. The dogs and brats are made from pasture-raised beef from the Panorama rancher cooperative and humanely raised pork. They’re served with fresh grilled onions on buns from Acme Bakery. The job pays $11 to $13 depending on experience, plus tips. Not bad for a job at a hot dog stand, but it’s slinging weenies for a living.
They posted the job on Craigslist and within two hours they had seven resumes from people with serious culinary educations and cooking chops.
The applicants had, variously, 15 years experience in hotel restaurant kitchens, fluency in French and Italian, experience in cruise ships kitchens, and as corporate chefs and executive chefs.
And almost all of them had expensive culinary degrees from places like the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., or Le Cordon Bleu at the Orlando Culinary Academy. -end-
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As this article clearly shows, the times are right for starting or expanding your hot dog cart business. Quality help is plentiful right now. If you haven’t gotten your business started yet, or need to know the tips and tricks that the pros use to manage multiple carts, check out my hot dog cart training materials.
-Steve
WOW! Can we say over qualified or what? I hope these culinary chefs can recognize how benenifical slinging dogs can be as compared to working in high dollar restaurants.
There is a guy in Chicago who runs a brick and mortar gourmet hot dog restaurant. He went to culinary school and serves really wild creations like hot dogs with brie and other fancy schmancy stuff like duck fat french fries.
Hot dogs are nice but a lot of people don’t know what was ground up to make that weiner. There are hot dogs, that I’ve heard about, that have pigs ears, nose, tail, fillers and all kinds of crap t hat they can’t sell over the counter. This hurts the hot dog business. Can you recommend a good brand of weiners that people can eat and won’t make you gag with bad thoughts like what’s in third weiner.
Trying to convert a hot dog hater into a hot dog lover is pretty much a waste of time. Concentrate on selling a good quality all beef hot dog to folks that already like hot dogs. There are plenty of them out there.
Good point Steve. Sabrett hotdogs natural casing is what I use They have that nice pop when u bite into them and they are 100% beef. You can’t argue with quality.
Indeed Harold. Send me some pics!