Considering a food-truck business? AU’s New Venture Accelerator, Harbert grad, eye ways to help new startups

Franky Junes Weeny Wagon owner Rick Lanier earned a degree at Harbert College of Business, and now he wants to assist others in avoiding the early roadblocks he faced.

Rick Lanier is known in the Opelika-Auburn area – and pretty much all of east Alabama – as the food truck guy.

Beyond that, however, Lanier could be described as a blue-collar, roll-up-your-sleeves, hardworking thinker, which combined with lessons learned from a 30-year career in the United States Navy helps him exemplify a true spirit of entrepreneurship.

He started out by “just trying to meet some people and sell some hot dogs,” but since has moved up from a simple food truck to an expansive network of business opportunities that are shaping the landscape of mobile food sales in the region.

That has Lanier and the New Venture Accelerator program at Auburn University considering a partnership to share with other aspiring food-truck business starters some of the tough lessons he’s learned in getting the wheels rolling.

The NVA program is jointly managed by Auburn’s  Harbert College of Business and the Auburn Research and Technology Foundation.

‘Hot dogs saved my life’

It started, for Lanier, with a book.

That, and a desire deep within to be self-employed making a living for himself and his wife after he retired from his three decades of military service and wife Karen from a 20-year career, also in the Navy.

“We like people,” Lanier said. “We like intermingling with people, especially like-minded people, so we kicked around the idea of a food truck, and naturally hot dogs came up.”

The book, “Hot Dogs Saved My Life,” by Ben Wilson, served as a guide and inspiration for Lanier and his wife.

“He made $100,000 in his first year with his first truck,” Lanier said, with the cost of making and selling a hot dog about $1.54, but with a sale price of $5. The Lanier couple followed suit, “and sure enough, just like the book said, we made $100,000 our first year.”

That, of course, included an untold number of hours doing the work required, finding business owners that would allow them to park their food truck during key service hours, and before all of that doing the mountain of paperwork to clear Health Department mandates and city permit requirements.

Was it worth it to get started?

Absolutely, Lanier says, and now he owns and dispatches two food trucks and two push carts with a diversified range of foods that could include hot dogs, waffles, barbeque, pizza and more.

But Lanier has much bigger plans in mind, plans that he hopes will transform his base of operations at 1300 McCoy St. in Opelika into a major attraction all of its own.

Kitchen for hire

“Covid was the catalyst for the food truck world,” Lanier said. When restaurants were forced to shut their doors for health concerns or lack of staff, and as customers feared venturing into crowded rooms during the pandemic’s height, food trucks that parked on the corner in high-traffic areas experienced newfound popularity.

The convenience of mobile food trucks serving at special events also grew, such as at concerts and festivals, Lanier said, and before long he realized the potential for growing revenue beyond that first truck selling hot dogs.

“People wanting to go into the food truck business must have a commissary where they can properly prepare their food, but just where is there a kitchen like that where they can do what they need to do?” he recalled thinking. “So, we opened our kitchen and named it The Galley,” which is the Navy’s word for a ship’s kitchen.

The medium-sized kitchen went into operation and Lanier began selling memberships to it in 2021.

Meanwhile the Lanier couple rented that building as well as a larger, main building that once served as a skate shop. Inside it, Lanier plans to create a classroom, a cold storage facility capable of storing medical supplies as well as food items, and room for stocking and selling or servicing all of the tools and equipment that other food-truck operators might need to purchase for their own business.

Additionally, Lanier hopes to turn his corner near downtown Opelika into a food truck park, where a bigger variety of food vendors can congregate and together lure a larger customer base during special events or peak sales times, such as on weekends.

“We hope to have a live-music venue and just make it fun like a state fair, with live music, flags, bells and whistles — all kinds of good stuff,” he said with a grin, but adding that those plans likely are at least a year away.

A big step up

Lanier’s new business model has evolved from selling hot dogs in a food truck, to becoming the teacher and supplier of as many other food-truck vendors as he can bring into his growing range of partnership opportunities.

The way he sees it, the better it is for those like him who want to start their own business, the better it is for his own operation, whether it be to rent his kitchen, sell equipment, or simply helping to promote the food-truck reputation of ease and affordability.

Don’t think, however, that Lanier skipped the idea of getting an education to help him along his way, and that’s where the Harbert College of Business first caught his attention.

“Someone said, ‘you need to get a business degree.’ So I did!” Lanier said.

He first attended two years at Southern Union State Community College in Opelika, then completed his bachelor’s degree in information systems management at Harbert.

Now, Lanier may soon be spending time on the Auburn campus again by sharing with other entrepreneur wannabes how they can get started in the food truck business, teaching what he knows in workshops or in other settings hosted by the New Venture Accelerator program.

‘He didn’t give up’

Ayshia Green-Calloway, program manager at New Venture Accelerator, said helping those who have ideas and motivation to create businesses is what the program is all about, and if Lanier can assist new food-truck owners, that effort would fit nicely within the program’s mission.

“We went to see Rick’s facility and talked about ways we could partner to help companies in the area. We hope to eventually host some joint workshops,” she said. “One of the things we ask entrepreneurs when they are preparing a pitch or drumming up a new idea is, what problem are you solving?

“For Rick, he had a personal problem that he realized was much more than that. He didn’t just start on a mission to be an entrepreneur, he started on a mission to ensure that his community members didn’t have to go through some of the obstacles that he did to start his food truck. What started as a quest for kitchen space for Franky Junes Weeny Wagon, became a resource for the community.

“For me, this embodies the entrepreneurial spirit because he didn’t give up, he kept his problem in perspective, he wasn’t afraid to find new ways to address his problem, and he understands what’s necessary to maintain the foundation of his business,” Green-Calloway said. “This is the embodiment of the New Venture Accelerator. We challenge new and aspiring entrepreneurs to keep the problem in perspective, challenge them to discover efficient ways to solve it, coach them when they feel like giving up.

“The culmination of these efforts directly affects and assist our community.”

Ward Swift, an Entrepreneur in Residence and communications director for the program, echoed Green-Calloway’s explanation of its mission.

The New Venture Accelerator, he said, works “to motivate others in the community who have a startup business idea to take a next first step, which is to visit the NVA for workshops, coaching, counseling and mentoring in order to achieve their own entrepreneurial dreams.”

To learn more about the Free Business Workshops hosted by the New Venture Accelerator, visit https://nva.auburn.edu/events/. To learn more about The Galley, visit https://thegalleyonmccoy.com/.