No legitimate business would take a product to market without first conducting some type of market research and my experience taught me that was a step NOT to skip. I had spent $2500 with the Wisconsin Innovation Service Center for professional market research, but it was  focused on finding a licensing partner and looking at the overall market place not on the end user's opinion. I had already demonstrated the Hotdog Ez Bun Steamer to friends and family, but their opinion didn't count because  their relationship with me meant that the data was tainted. What I needed was a group of complete strangers to evaluate my product objectively. So I called up the local Home Depot Store, spoke to the manager and asked him if I could cook free hotdogs for all of his employees in exchange for their opinion on my Hotdog Bun Steaming product. He said "I'm sure my employees would appreciate free Hotdogs for lunch, could you feed 30 to 40 people?", I said "sure, what time on Saturday should I show up?" I purchased 6 packs of Hotdogs and Buns, loaded up my cooler, brought my camping stove and my wife and I headed over to our neighborhood Home Depot Store to provide all the employees a free lunch.

When we got there the Store Manager had just stepped out, but the HR manager was there. I could tell she wasn't too keen on me providing free Hotdogs to the store employees in exchange for some market research. She asked me to wait outside her office while she "checked into it", code for give me a minute to figure out how I can put the kibosh on this. I knew what was going to happen, even though I had spoke to the store manager and I was providing a free lunch for all the store employees the HR manager was looking for any company policy that might be violated. Most HR managers are paranoid and trained that anything out of the norm could lead to some type of litigation. In their mind its always better to say NO than to take a chance and think out of the box. So with enough food to feed 40 employees she sent us packing and we walked out of Home Depot experiencing another roadblock put in place by the limited thinking of a mid-level manager. Once again the roadblock we faced sent us on a better path, as we were driving away dejected my wife and I were thinking about what we were going to do with all those Hotdogs. With determination, I said "we're not going home until we find a group of people that we can cook free hotdogs for, that shouldn't be too hard!" Then we got the idea of going to our local fire station and cooking free hotdogs for the on duty fireman, the closest fire station was only a few miles away.

Fire Stations aren't really set up for visitors, there's no customer parking or a front door with an open sign, just finding which door to enter was a bit of a challenge and once you go in there's usually no one there to greet you. It’s a strange felling walking around a fire station looking for someone and saying "Hello is anyone here?" When I finally found someone they were as startled as I was but they had a badge and I had some explaining to do. Once he realized it wasn't an emergency, I wasn't selling anything and I was going to cook everyone free hotdogs, a smile came on his face as he got on the PA and called the other fireman to the kitchen for chowtime.

This  was our first pitch to strangers and it was good practice for the up coming Chicago Show. My wife did a great job, as I started my pitch and cooked the hotdogs, she asked the market research questions and took notes. The Firemen loved my hotdogs and thought my little steamer was pretty cool. We still had quite a few Hotdog left so we asked them if they knew of another fire station that might like to have some free hotdogs. One fireman suggested the fire station in the next town over, it was a lot bigger station and the fire chief had a reputation for eating a lot of hotdogs. We packed up our stuff and headed over there. This time the fireman were ready and waiting, as soon as we got there they escorted us to the kitchen. This station had a huge table and before I had unpacked my cooler there were 8 or 9 fireman sitting at the table waiting on their hotdog. A few minutes later the fire chief showed up and for the next 30 minutes I was cooking hotdogs as fast as I could. Before I knew it the fire chief was asking me for his 4th hotdog, that’s when I knew I really had something.