Glizzy Guys is a food stand offering hot dogs, grilled cheese, chips, and drinks at college parties, field days, and catered events. We often offer food options where there are no others, creating a necessary and fun experiance for our customers.
It started in my first semester of college. I went to thanksgiving on the east coast of florida, and my grandparents sent me back to school with a small portable grill. Im not sure where the idea came from but my friend Matteo and I decided that we wanted to sell hot dogs at the upcoming christmas party. We went out to buy supplies: the cheapest hot dogs and frozen burgers we could find. The night of the party we lugged the grill over to a dorm complex and grabbed a few desks that we found along the way. I grilled and Matteo walked around, made our presence known, and took payments via Venmo. It was a succes, we grossed about $180, a decent proof of concept and an adreline rush that kept us coming back.
The second semester of my freshman year stayed pretty simple. Selling dogs for $2 and charging 50 cents for toppings. throughout the semester I did buy some more stuff, a table and a shelf shown in the picture on the left. This is where I began to understand the importance of efficancy and placement, storing buns easily assesible in the bun bin to speed up delivery when the line got long. At this point i was doing anywhere from $150 - $200 per night, and didnt invest much time into preparation or planning. At some point during the semester, we coined the name Glizzy Guys and I started making posts on instagram. The second semester of freshman year we generated a little over $1,000.
Sophomore Year
Sophomore year started with some much needed improvments, including a sign/menu, a new griddle, and the introduction of the grilled cheese - a much needed menu item for a prevelent vegitarian population. Revenue grew to $250 - $300 per party and grilled cheese proved to be the reason why. I still sold the same amount of hotdogs but now a new demographic was captured by the grilled cheese. Grilled cheese was pretty much the only reason we were profitable, with varaible cost coming in at about 60 cents and a sale price of $5, selling 20-25 per night is what
made this stage a success. During the fall semester we were able to double revenue from the previous coming in at about $2,300. As you can see by the photo to the right, things were still very basic, but we were growing, and I was motivated to push the limits.
The next semester is where tings began to take a turn in the right direction. We created our first peice of merchindise: A gray t-shirt with our newly designed logo on the front right chest, and a mini hotdog with our area code on the back neck. They We made every shirt ourselves. They were $15 and we sold about 40 of them. People were excited for them and were pretty popular, but things were still early, mostly just friends bought them.
Twords the end of the semester I purchased a tent on facebook. I wanted a more proffesional look and something to make us standout. The tent made a debut on a kappa field day (on saturdays kids hangout on the rugby field during the day). The tent prooved to be a vital component to our growth. Changing nothing besides adding a tent, we grossed a record high of over $500. Could it have been the visibility? officialness? maybe people were extra hungy? Im not sure, but this addition was the catalist that began to reveal what Glizzy Guys had the ability to become on this small campus. We ended the semester doing about $3500 in revenue.
Junior year
During the first semester of my junior year I took an entrepreneurship class. This class is what forced me to experiment and try new things. One of the first assignmnets was coming up with ideas to launch an on campus business. I of course entered my existing business into the class. We had weekly assignmnets, many had us simply do somehting difforent, and compare the results. This is when I really focused on efficancy. obsessing over the placment of itmes like toppings, buns, tables, everything. I also tired to leverage human buying behavior when it came to menu design and customer service. We also implimented a much needed ticket system assigning numbers to orders, to eliminate confusion, theft, and of course help us remember the orders. We were doing up to $600 in revenue per night, but a long streak of no parties damaged our momentum. We continued to sell t-shirts, attend kappa field days and parties and expand into a new market on campus. I sent a message to a club that organizes all sorts of events for students to see if they might want to have us at their upcoming fall concert. They liked the idea, and shortly after, matteo and i were preparing to feed 500 people hot dogs, grilled cheese, and vegan/glutenfree dogs. We were totaly unprepared, I remember sitting down while planning in disbelief, our equitment couldnt handle that amount of volume. At this point we served about 100 students in about 2 hours, almost a person per minute. Id say thats pretty good, considering we are making food to order. This gig needed us to serve 500 people in the same amount of time. I bought another 36 inch griddle hired two more people and it turned out to be okay. I will never forget making hot dogs right as people flooded in. I handed a newly hired friend jamie a hot dog and looked back at the line of people waiting for their free food. The line went back to the stage where the opening band was warming up, about a couple hundred feet back. Another funny one was when another new hire cary was making grilled cheese, one by one he flipped over about 8 grilled cheeses, each of them black and burned to a crisp. This event opened my eyes to catering on campus, a form of revenue that didnt interfear with our parties and field days. We ended up at $7500 that semester, I credit it to my efforts to improve efficancy.
Spring semester was when things came together. I invested in a custom screen, so I could screenprint my own merchindise. my girldriend Prue drew up a great design, hot dogs jumping off the pier on our campus, a favorite spot of students. The merch took off. We sold over 100 pieces throughout the semester, you couldnt walk around without seeing someone wearing a shirt or hoodie. I also introduced smash burgers, a huge effort but worth it for its $8 price tag. Prue was back from study abroud and we now had three peolpe in the tent. That fact alone allowed us to average over $700 per night. Early in the semester I realized the line only gets so long. At a certain point people are not willing to wait for a hot dog. I bought a hot food bag, so matteo could walk around yelling hot dogs like a baseball vendor. It worked, but we would get to busy for me to fill back up his bag and he would come back to the tent. The midnight rush from about 11:30 pm - 1 am was caotic. line 20 people deep, a large group waiting for their food and hanging out over to the left. Tickets were everywhere, me prue and matteo getting food out as quick as we could, me running out of hot dogs and feeling dumb watching them cook. This was the norm, but I realized we could be selling a lot more dogs than 100 per night. Thats when we added a fourth to the tent, spencer tended to the grilled cheeses for the rest of the semester. From there we were doing $800 per night, focusing on getting food out as fast as possible with our ticket system and calculated kitchen set up. Our best day came on the last sale of the school year, grossing over $1400 and selling out in about three hours. I often overlook how much social media, merchendise presence and consistency contribute to our success. We havnt missed a party since we started, thats about 45 parties straight. Not to mention all of the field days and catering events we have attended. Kids on campus had no choice but to buy a hot dog at some point. All said and done we did over $14k during the spring semester. Over $2,000 from merch, $1500 from catering, and the rest at parties and field days.
Senior year
I was pretty burnt out after last year. Buying product, food prepping, planning, organizing, and setting up the tent every time we sell was a lot of work. I would start working at 6 pm to get ready for a party and make it to bed at 3 am after cleaning up. If we worked a field day and a party that night I would start at 8 am. Thats a 19 hour day. I didnt want to continue this process for another year just for the pay. The growth is what I enjoyed, and I felt that we had perfected our operations. I began concepting the idea of selling out of a trailer for my senior year. Conversations started with administration and many months of waiting and emailling followed. The last few days before I needed to place an order for a custom trailer I was granted the abiliity to park and sell food out of a trailer on campus.
The trailer makes prep, setup , and selling more efficant. It eliminates my labor cost by about 4 hours per night, eliminates an hour of clean up and gives perfect work stations for 4 people. One taking orders, one fufilling orders, one on the dog grill, and one on the grilled cheese grill. So far it has worked great, cutting down wait times after ordering to seconds. Though lines still exists as it takes time to get payment and take orders. We had the chance to serve at only two parties this semester due to the hurricans and I am excited to get back.