One year ago today: August 21, 2017, Nashville, this ain't.
Five years ago today: August 21, 2013, multiple choice.
Nine years ago today: August 21, 2009, do not overspend.
Random years ago today: August 21, 2008, up yours, with grace.
Why here’s another place I did not visit, the Crusty Bread in Tarpon Springs. Add it to the list of things I would definitely have done had they not been closed. I understand, these are mom & pops that close on Sundays. Sigh, the franchises and corporations have made it impossible for most of these businesses to survive. This building was also a block off the beaten track, and these days tourists usually visit only what they can spy from the car window. Some people go on a holiday to party, I tend to go looking for good women, a disappointing venture, and failing that, to read good books. I retain more when I read in interesting surroundings. Tarpon is interesting, at least for the day I was there.
The book contains interesting observations that have become lost in new accounts I’ve read of the same situations. For example, we all know the Union used observation balloons during the Civil War. But did you know the south had materials for the balloons until they asked the womenfolk for silk dresses and built the Confederacy’s only unit. For the last two years of the war, the North suddenly ceased using balloons and nobody seems to know why. Because the book is so interesting, I may redact parts of it for you over the next few weeks, as addendums.
We had a brief meeting at noon to decide on a tarp canopy for the mobile kitchen. For now it is under a loose tarp, but that discourages either of use from doing small jobs and having to remove and replace it. The fenced area is slightly too small, but nobody knows exactly where the property line is so the canopy may be a few inches over. And it is likely to disappear in the first tropical storm. But I would like to gain experience fussing with these tent-like structures. I’ve got a coupon for a 10x20 footer for $99. Check back. This is a busy week, we also set up at the Monday flea market and sold $80 in doodads.
So it is not like we don’t know how to hit the street parties and sidewalk sales. We simply need a product we can move faster than doorknobs, wooden boxes, and old barber signs. You might think the hotdog stand came out of nowhere, but nosiree, we already have a year-long chronicle of searching for something that better justifies the collaboration of two men with such differing skill sets. The cart was not a beginning, but more a result. I mean $80 is nice, but that was a piddling $40 each, and we essentially got the articles we sold for free. I think if we had been pushing hotdogs on that hot and sultry day, we could have boosted $420 - $460 in gross sales, of which I’m sure over half would have been cold drinks. A contribution margin of half that is more than enough to get me over to downtown Mulberry, Florida. Not sure what a contribution margin is? Look it up. You know already, you just didn’t know it was as sharply defined—and you’ll know instantly why I use it.
Swiss airport bus.
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Agt. R went ahead with the Yamaha scooter. It makes my old wreck look like a dinosaur. Yamahas are much better products and that brings the active total of vehicles available for operations up to five. That’s five vehicles and three trailers. They won’t all be used to sell hotdogs, but they are ready if any momentum develops. These are serious considerations too often overlooked by seat-of-the-pants operators. We still have to solid explanation why 99.6% of all hotdog startups have not only failed, they have disappeared. Along, one supposes, with the dreams of those who bought them. Well, tough. I’d rather have big plans than big dreams.
Still, it is time to get the cart into operation. The delays to date were necessary and they did reveal a series of snags that were best handled before we opened business. Tourist season is approaching and we still have no trained staff and no experience with the logistics. There’s more, thanks to my brothers, I can be one of the nerd-types when I need to be. (Except I can turn it back off.) And I read the manuals that came with the cart. They had not been touched, except for chapters concerning sales. On page 106, I saw a scribble in the margin, the previous owner had done an extra $23.25 in business on July 4th, 2014 by selling snausages one at a time for tips only. (Overseas readers, a snausage is a doggie biscuit treat that resembles a tiny hotdog.) I think I’m beginning to more appreciate my decision to get the more expensive blanket business license. Hey, that’s what top-notch management is all about—making a slough of right guesses early in the game.
That’s another reason I’m pushing to get the cart in operation asap. I’m glad in a sense there was a delay because that revealed a series of snags that would have been much harder to contend with than if we been already running the business. I’ve found several suitable burners, but I’m beginning to really hate actual stores that advertise on-line that they have a product, but drop ship it. Is that clear? I didn’t want to shop on-line, I wanted to find one and drive over an buy it today. Instead, you often don’t find out they don’t carry the article in stock until you waste time getting to the page that says “place in cart”. Dammit, I want it in a real cart, you numbskulls.
If all else fails, tomorrow we will order it on-line. This pushes opening date into October, but we are already less worried about setting up and selling at private functions. We’ve discovered what others are charging and would make a suitable profit charging the same. The trick is to get comfortable sharing the money, a concept we are finding is unusually abhorrent to many single operators. It’s the American system that fosters that secrecy, I mean, I know I was strongly that way when I had a job.
[Author’s note: I’ll explain a bit deeper why Americans don’t talk much about their incomes. You already know the tax system has a lot to do with that. But another major factor is that the widespread use of credit in America can disguise income or lack of it. If people were aware of what you made, it would be all too easy to determine whether or not you were living above or below your means. And that has strong social and criminal overtones for 90% of the people overdoing it either way.
Poverty is an equalizer in that situation. Look at India, or Mexico, where any rise above subsistence level is instantaneously detected by the neighbors and the authorities. A $1 difference in monthly income can easily result in a knock on your door.]
The best news is that startup expenses, except for initial food stock levels, have drawn to a close. Actual expenses were around $1800, plus another few thousand in refundable deposits and contingency reserves. I won’t say exact amounts, but the one remaining unknown expense is exactly what is required operationally to place hotdogs into saleable condition. I can say, however, that we know it will cost a few hundred bucks at most (in supplies), and there are “thousands and thousands” of dollars ready now.
My dollars.
ADDENDUM
The telegraph was already militarized by 1860, but oddly, it was not operated by soldiers. Teenage boys, civilians, were the actual operators. But my interest is not about dots and dashes, rather the way the system worked on the whole. It doesn’t say but the system was so efficient for its day, I think it was the newspapers that drew it up. They loaded a series wagons, each one carried ten miles of wire. They galloped in relays to pre-mapped terminuses and then strung the ten miles of wire in around four hours. Thus, five wagons could have fifty miles of line operating in less than a day.
It must have worked like a hot damn, because before the war ended, it took just four months to connect the east and west coasts. I also did not know that well before the Monitor ironclad was built, revolving turrets were built on land, some of them huge that housed hundreds of men. The concept of the turret is that land forts and sailing ships with fixed guns needed large numbers of the guns to defend themselves on all sides. But the revolving turret meant with fewer guns, the enemy was always in the field of fire.
With the telegraph again, the wagons also carried thin poles called “lances” that they stuck in the ground, fort to the mile when trees were not found. However, these were highly visible in war zones, and often the insulated wires were just laid on the ground. There were frequent arguments between the generals and the owner of the telegraph lines. The newspapers paid for reports, the army did not.
As your treat for reading this far, this is the solo I’m going to play on bass. It is the excellent violin blast from Baba O’Riley (Teenage Wasteland) and I fully admit to “cheating” by using every available resource at my disposal. I will take this perfectly written sheet music in Eb, transpose it to E, and transfer it to bass as an ending probably for some Johnny Cash tune, or maybe Dwight Yoakum, any body who does a lot of material in E. I may just play the highly-recognizable ending part, which is also a flashy bass pattern. I don’t know about the 16th notes. They are magnificent, but they are not bass.
I do not actually play every note. The rapid fire violin isn’t practical for bass, but the notes suggest a melody most anyone can here. The novelty is to pick out those notes and also to play them consistently “wrong”. It’s non-musical to think in these terms, but like lead players, violinists tend to play a repetitive passage slightly differently in each measure, which isn’t really needed to have the same effect on other insturments. Also, the audacious use of slides at measures 32, 35, and 37 are ideal for my style, and I replace the stops with better-sounding thirds, my specialty.
My plan is to tack it on if I’m getting a loud applause and get as far into it as I can before anybody notices what is going on. Yes, these are stage techniques and as far as I am concerned the day for leaving that to chance is gone. I’ve built on crowd response before but it was random. All that’s changing this time is I’m systematizing the process. I’ve played in bands before that rehearsed it, but then they played it every time even if the mood wasn’t there.
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