But Talbot is thrilled that Strahan has chosen to set a spell, chiefly because it allows the owner to maintain a sanity-preserving distance from the Quarter. From his well-appointed suburban home, Talbot handles Lucky Dogs' finances and plots forays into new markets--all of which have been shipwrecked on the rocks of politics and miserable luck. (The notable exception was Lucky Dogs' 1993 expansion into New Orleans's airport; sales there account for $1.4 million.) "If I hadn't found Jerry, I would have had to manage the vendors myself. But let me tell you, not everybody can do it," says Talbot, who is grooming sons Mark, 32, and Kirk, 30, to take over the business. "Jerry has more patience than I ever had with these people." Talbot's absence bestows on Strahan freedom, authority--and a convenient scapegoat when he has to make unpopular decisions. "I had a vendor say he thinks Doug doesn't exist, that he's a hand puppet Jerry talks to," says day manager Hager, who claims to have seen Talbot only a dozen times in the past 16 years.
Talbot's ambivalence about Lucky Dogs--his pride in the product, his reservations about the staff--date back to 1969, when he acquired the company almost against his will. Having just sold his interest in an Orange Julius franchise, he was looking around for a new venture and starting to feel a little desperate. "When you're young, newly married, a new father, all you think is, how the hell am I going to support this family?" he says. Talbot had heard for years that Lucky Dogs was for sale, and he liked the mechanics of selling hot dogs--the quick deal, the freedom from malls with their overhead. He also liked the French Quarter, which he found "fascinating, despite all its problems." And Lucky Dogs was profitable, with $40,000 a year in sales. On the downside the carts violated every health code on the books--no refrigeration, no sneeze guards, no hand-washing facilities. And then, of course, there were the vendors.
Still, Talbot figured it was worth making a call to Stephen Loyacano, the man who had founded Lucky Dogs with his brother back in 1947. Loyacano had originally asked $200,000, but as time passed he dropped the price to less than a third of that amount. "He just wanted to get out," says Talbot. "But there were so many negatives that it scared the hell out of me." Talbot declined to buy, but Loyacano persisted. "We kept going through this night after night," says Talbot. "I kept saying, 'Mr. Loyacano, you're wasting your time.' And he kept saying, 'Just make me an offer.' Finally, just to get him off my back, I said, '$15,000.' And he said, 'OK.' And I said, 'Oh shit, what am I going to do now?"
At the time Talbot calculated the company's life expectancy at a year or two. But Lucky Dogs proved surprisingly resilient. A grandfather clause passed by the city council restricted street vending in the French Quarter to companies that had been operating there before 1964, effectively granting Lucky Dogs a monopoly on wiener sales. Costs were low and flexible: vendors worked--and still work--as subcontractors for a 16% commission plus tips. (Day and night managers, most of whom rise from vendor ranks, are on salary; so are cleanup people.) Since Lucky Dogs rented no retail space, it was easy to adjust the number of carts on the street as sales ebbed and flowed. And after a few years the company managed to field a fleet of carts that more than satisfied the city's rigorous health code.
Talbot also found that Lucky Dogs had achieved a weird kind of celebrity outside the city, as evidenced by a flood of letters from visitors who were tickled by the carts. "You've got to notice us: a damn hot dog that big sitting out in the street," Talbot says.
But while the carts burnished Lucky Dogs' reputation, the vendors continued to tarnish it. Today most people who wash up on the company's doorstep find their way through word of mouth, but for years Talbot and Strahan recruited bodies--able and otherwise--in missions and on street corners. As a result the company's public face included one vendor with a hulking mass of hair who wadded all the money he made into tiny balls and piled it on top of his cart, and a vendor who would get drunk and scream, "Damn Yankees, go home if you're not going to buy a hot dog!" at passersby. "We've tried to get better people," says Talbot. "We've tried ads and employment agencies. But most people can't take the street."
With pickings so meager, Strahan doesn't turn away many applicants. Anyone who is clean, reasonably personable, can make change, and has an ID--even the occasional prison ID is OK--gets a cart. The general manager doesn't check references, although for years he gave the names of all applicants to the FBI, which wanted to keep track of who was drifting in and out of the Quarter. ("The good thing was that it showed me we weren't having major problems. That was refreshing," Strahan says.) And even after 28 years of almost nonstop hiring, Strahan doesn't claim extraordinary prescience about who will or won't work out. "I've seen guys that I thought would steal the money by 8 p.m. who've stayed here for years," he says. "I've seen guys I thought would stay here for years take the money by 8 p.m." His only rule of thumb: Don't trust the applicant who tries to sell himself. "Many times guys will come in here and they'll say, 'I'm looking for permanent work," says Strahan. "They're gone in two or three days. They said that just to impress me. So give me the guy who says, 'I'm only going to be here for a day or two,' because at least he's telling the truth."
The unreliability of new recruits and Strahan's reluctance to stock Lucky Dogs' ranks with tenderfeet forces him to be generous with second chances. "It's the guy I haven't caught who worries me, because he's probably smarter than I am," says the general manager, explaining why he not only rehired a man who stole $800 from the company but also made him a manager. "Joe [Mayfield] was in his mid- fifties when he took the money and probably 60 or so when he came back," says Strahan. "He wasn't going to run anywhere. He was sorry for what he did. And in the end I got more out of him than he ever got out of us."
