We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Michael Boehm. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Michael below.
Michael, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
My wife and I had bought a hot dog cart several years before we started G’Daddy’s to support non – profits and church groups in our community. We really enjoyed serving hot dogs to people and the interesting conversations with them. Once I retired it was a natural transition from corporate life to a hot dog cart. Now we have “grown up” and are transitioning again to a Food Trailer!
Why Hot Dogs? Because we love hot dogs, in fact our go to meal is Hot Dogs, Mac N Cheese and Pork and Beans.
Michael, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
My prior working life, of 42 years, was at different levels of the HVAC Industry. The last 10 years or so, I spent every day sitting behind a computer. Once retired, I was determined to follow a new career where I would have the opportunity to meet people and serve them directly, face to face. Technology is great but nothing can replace face to face, personal interaction. Our overriding goal is to provide our customers a positive experience through great customer service and provide great food at reasonable prices.
Interestingly we chose the name G’Daddy’s because it is the name that my grandchildren call me.
Have you ever had to pivot?
Yes we have a couple of times.
So, a requirement of any mobile food business in Tennessee is that you must have an approved commissary where you prep food, store food/paper goods, and dispose of your grey water. We were renting space in a commissary in Nashville and were blessed to have a building near our home come available to rent, which after renovations, we were able to get a permit and use it as our commissary. After being it in about 7 months, we made a business decision to use the building as for takeout. While we built a small but loyal following, the financial results simply were not there and in March 2022 we ceased takeout operations from that location. While we learned a lot the most important lesson we learned is to keep first things first and for us that is being mobile.
In late summer of this year we were blessed to buy a “lightly” used food trailer and in September we parked the hot dog cart and put the food trailer into operation. At the current time we are looking to expand our menu in 2023.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
We have worked really hard to build our brand in our community. We have many positive reviews thanking us for the great food, kind customer service and overall cleanliness.
More than once we have experienced customers telling us that they are buying from us because our food area is so clean. We have a saying on the job, “If you have time to lean, you have time to clean!”
We are also blessed to be well known in our area for our Fresh Smashed Lemonade. We offer it in several flavors and it is a crowd pleaser. We are unique in that we “smash” the lemons rather than squeeze them, and use raw cane sugar in our simple syrup.
Contact Info:
- Website: gdaddyscatering.com
- Facebook: G’Daddy’s Dogs