Hey producer Brittany Curran in here. This week we're revisiting some of our most favorite

episodes of the year and today we'll be talking small businesses and yes of course the hotdog

guy. NPR.

Chris Vangerette can still remember the exact moment when he knew he would start his own

business. And that was made a 22nd. That was made a 22nd when I found the cart. The cart.

It was a food cart, 7 feet by 8 feet, stainless steel, little kitchenette inside and a window

to take orders. Sitting in the parking lot of the Korean Baptist Church on Randolph Road

for four years it had been sitting there with a for sales sign. So it was like oh that's

it. And I was I didn't I didn't look at anything else. Truly I'm sitting here getting

worked up thinking about it. Chris saw this cart and had a kind of revelation. He'd worked

in the restaurant industry for 20 years and was managing a fancy restaurant in Washington

DC. But he got laid off during the pandemic and it was a terrible experience. He had a young

child and a mortgage. But he wasn't sure what to do. He thought you know food service,

hospitality. That is what I know. No, I'm good at hospitality. I grew up with walking

into my grandmother's house and a plate of food was in front of me within minutes. You

know what a hospitality is a feeling. And I had committed more than half of my life to

this industry. Chris was turning all of these things over in his head when he drove by

the Korean Baptist church on Randolph Road and he saw the used food cart for sale. I put

across three lanes of traffic to jump into this parking lot to go look at the trailer.

That was the big moment of like all right we can do we can do this. In that big moment

Chris's business was born. Now this was in the teeth of the COVID crisis. Thousands of

businesses were closing economic uncertainty was everywhere. But here's the weird thing.

...