Meet one of KC’s last hot dog vendors, slinging wieners outside a weed shop
For years, Jason Vanderlinden worked a hot dog cart outside the Kansas City Municipal Court building at 11th and Cherry. He catered to the bustling downtown throng: attorneys, jurists, city employees, and a colorful array of individuals recently cited or detained for minor infractions.
“There she goes,” he’d say to a passerby. “Table for two?” “Cheaper out here than in there.” “Don’t go away hungry, buddy.” Anything to steal some attention that could lead to a sale.
Back then, the game was about sly charm and foot traffic. He thrived. But that was back then. Since the pandemic, Vanderlinden’s office is a parking lot abutting a city sidewalk outside From the Earth, a marijuana dispensary at 6200 Troost Ave.
He thought he’d stumbled onto a brilliant idea. Court proceedings were moving to Zoom, and downtown office buildings were emptied of workers. But weed was now legal. He moved his operations so he could greet customers as they departed the dispensary. Sausages and stoners: It seemed like a match made in heaven.
“It hasn’t gone like I thought,” Vanderlinden, 47, admitted Wednesday afternoon over the roar of passing traffic on Troost. “It’s harder to flag down cars than humans. And these stoners aren’t always as nice as you’d expect.”
He loads up the cart into his old Ford Explorer and tows it here from Raytown just about every day, though. Five years running.
In a city rife with food trucks and mobile kitchens with expansive menus, Vanderlinden is a rarity: the old-school hot dog vendor. A man with an umbrella, a grill, three types of sausages, and a prayer that the numbers pencil out by Friday.
Tally it up, and he’s been doing this for nearly 20 years now. He’s observed all kinds of semi-legal freelance work on the streets of Kansas City. A guy who made $2,000 in a day selling earplugs outside a monster-truck rally — even though they were giving them away inside. Another who wore a vest and charged for parking he didn’t own outside a Taylor Swift show. Hustlers who make it look easy.
“Meanwhile, I’m out here fighting to sell a Nathan’s,” Vanderlinden says.
‘It was a good time to be a vendor’
Sometimes the customers don’t even bother to get out of their cars. They pull up next to Vanderlinden’s cart like it’s a drive-thru.
“We got a Nathan’s all-beef, a cheddar jalapeno smoked sausage and KC’s own Scimeca’s Italian sausage,” Vanderlinden says to a man sitting in the driver’s seat of a silver Mustang. “Any item is $7 and comes with chips and a beverage, brother.”
The gentleman puffs on a blunt while he waits for his all-beef with mustard, plain chips and lime drink. He’s in and out in less than 60 seconds.
“I pride myself on speed,” Vanderlinden says after the sale, “though some days I feel like I’m working at a Sonic out here.”
He’s adaptable. You have to be in order to make it in this business. The jobs he worked before — the city of Lake Tapawingo, the Blue Springs Water Department — never lasted long. “I had too big of a mouth — I was too young and wild and loud. I figured the way to work was to create my own job and hope for the best.”
He knew of a vendor downtown. Not a friend, exactly. The guy charged him $500 for the phone number of a guy who maybe had a hot dog cart for sale. “People in this business, they don’t like to share knowledge. It’s like you’re training your competitor.”
Vanderlinden borrowed 5 grand from his dad, bought the secondhand cart, and set up shop near 13th and Grand back when the Power & Light District and Sprint Center were still just muddy construction zones.
He talks about those days with a kind of reverence. He fed the guys building the city: steelworkers, electricians, carpenters. Before the arena was open, before the bars were lit, Vanderlinden was there. He paid his dad back in two years.
“It was a good time to be a food vendor,” he said.
He carried the momentum to other sites. Weekends, he’d work deep into the night on the sidewalk outside Missie B’s, the midtown gay bar open till 3 a.m. Rockfest was always profitable. The Plaza lighting ceremony. Municipal court. Car washes.
“I had a nice lick outside Restaurant Depot in the West Bottoms for awhile,” Vanderlinden said. “Humans everywhere, most of them in the same business as me. It seemed like everyone was saying yes. Then corporate got involved and said I couldn’t do it anymore. That’s the problem. Every time you find a honey hole, either the city steps in or somebody tries to take it from you.”
The regulations are a moving target. “The city says I can’t even do peppers, onions, or sauerkraut anymore because I’m not enclosed like a trailer. So I’d have to store that stuff in a separate sauté cup, individually dated, separate cooler system, all this stuff. It’s all politics.”
He’s tried to do it right. Keeps the hot dog list short and legal. He’s allowed a dog, a brat, an Italian. Basic condiments. Nothing more. He follows the rules — even the ones nobody enforces anymore. It irks him to see other operators flouting the law.
“These new guys turn up out of nowhere, and half of them don’t have licenses or anything,” Vanderlinden said. “Then I have people coming up to me asking why I don’t have a Philly cheesesteak or a burrito. ‘Well, sir, we’re not allowed to.’ I’m one of the only ones left doing things straight, far as I can tell.”
Weed and wieners
This spot, outside the dispensary, is Vanderlinden’s latest frontier. He made his pitch to From the Earth’s owners in 2020 and got their blessing. The day medical marijuana sales opened in Missouri, he was outside slinging dogs. He’s here most weekdays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., sometimes later if the weather’s kind.
But business is fickle. He raised his combo price from $6 to $7 last year. But some days he doesn’t make $50. A good day he’ll leave with a couple hundred. But that’s not including his expenses: buns, meat, ice, condiments, propane. He spends $200 a week just on chips.
It feels like he deals with more nonsense over here too. The other day, a guy asked for a free sample. “Of a hot dog! Where in the world is that normal?” Vanderlinden said. Another woman recently pulled up in her car to let Vanderlinden know how wonderful it is that he’s feeding the community, then waited for her free hot dog. He informed her that he was running a business. “It turned nasty pretty quick,” he said.
Vanderlinden thinks about relocating sometimes. Downtown’s dead, but he heard there’s a lot of construction happening on the riverfront.
“But I built this spot up,” Vanderlinden says. “I don’t want somebody to come in and steal it from me.”
He once thought he’d expand into a larger business, with his own employees operating carts he owned. But the dream is smaller now. Maybe a trailer with $20 plates. Sell 50 of them a day, and that’s good living.
For now, it’s this: a cart, a cooler, a grill that cooks quick. And here comes another customer. Robert Sims, a first-timer who works at the O’Reilly Auto Parts across the street, will have a Nathan’s all-beef, sour cream and onion chips, and an orange Shasta.
Vanderlinden gets to work. One glove on. Bun in foil. Dog on grill. He tongs the dog into the bun and slips a paper towel underneath the foil. As he hands Sims his lunch, the wind whips, and Vanderlinden’s umbrella briefly looks like it wants to tip onto the sidewalk. He jerks it back into place with the same stubborn grip he’s used to hold onto his business for nearly two decades. The job isn’t glamorous. It’s not scalable. But it’s honest work, and he’ll be back tomorrow. That’s more than most can say.
This story was originally published May 5, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
