The Little Hot Dog Wagon is a Black woman-owned mobile food wagon rolling through New York City and New Jersey.
The Harlem-based food truck was founded by Dawn Demry and offers hot dogs, vegan sausages, veggie burgers, tacos, and more, that are then topped with her homemade natural kraut.
Demry is doing some pretty amazing things with her brand since debuting in 2018. She has a contract with Key Foods where she keeps their shelves across the country stocked with her signature kraut. She is also reportedly in talks with Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods for potential opportunities all while getting ready to debut a second truck in the Big Apple.
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It’s a success that Demry deserves after overcoming so much including breast cancer and four rounds of layoffs with her former employer CUNY, she explained to Thrillist.
“I pretty much hit the ground running,” she stated. “It’s just like parenting; it didn’t come with a manual. I didn’t know the first place to start. All I knew was that I was laid off from my job, and the bills kept coming, so I had to do something.”
She went to her uncle who had a custom food truck around that was perfect for a hot dog wagon. Demry started building a small base of loyal customers that grew over time, with many people requesting a bottle of her kraut to take home.
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“I always knew that I wanted to serve the customers, the people who believed in me. And I wanted to cater to them because they are the ones who have made me who I am today,” she adds.
You can the Black woman-owned truck in Harlem, usually at the corner of Lenox Avenue and 123rd Street or in Montclair, New Jersey.