Teen’s Hot Dog Stand Gets Health Code Complaint. Health Inspectors Help Him Get up to Code. | Eastern North Carolina Now

Publisher's note: This informational nugget was sent to me by Ben Shapiro, who represents the Daily Wire, and since this is one of the most topical news events, it should be published on BCN.

The author of this post is Ashe Schow.

    A nosy neighbor called the Minneapolis Health Department (MHD) on a teenager's hot dog stand. Thankfully, health inspectors didn't shut the stand down, but instead helped the teen get up to code and even paid the fee for his "short term food permit" out of their own pockets.

    Jaequan Faulkner, 13, decided to open a hot dog stand in front of his home earlier this summer. He planned to sell hot dogs for $2 and sodas and chips for $1 each. Someone saw the stand and e-mailed a complaint to the MHD because he was "operating as an unlicensed vendor with his lunchtime endeavor," according to a report from CNBC earlier this month.

    MHD environmental health director Dan Huff told the outlet that "Before responding to the complaint, what we did was put on hold our response until we could figure out how to help him."

    Health inspectors then taught Faulkner how to properly handle food and what it would take to get his hot dog stand to pass inspection, which it then did. Once the stand passed inspection, the inspectors paid the $87 fee for a "short term food permit," CNBC reported.

    "It just took off. He never gave up and he kept pushing forward. And pushing me along, pulling me along with him," said Faulkner's uncle Jerome.

    Now Jerome helps out at Faulkner's hot dog stand weekdays between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.

    "It's not easy working for a 13-year-old," Jerome told the outlet. "[Faulkner says] 'I need this, I need that,' and I just get it for him while he controls the cash register. He knows the cash register pretty well."

    Jerome told CNBC that the pair sold "between 100, 150 hot dogs a day," which amounts to $200 to $300 a day just from hot dogs. That doesn't include chips and sodas sold with the hot dogs. Jerome said his nephew used the money for school clothes and wanted to continue working at a restaurant after school.

    "What's next for me is, I'm trying to get a little spot, a restaurant or something," Faulkner told the outlet. "Right when I get out of school I can go there and start working. Somewhere permanent, but it's just small and not big."

    Stories abound of other kids' food stands getting shut down for lacking a permit. In May 2018, The Daily Wire's Paul Bois reported that a charity lemonade stand in Denver, Colorado, was shut down because it didn't have the proper permit.

    "The boys went online and they decided they wanted to help a child in another country less fortunate, and we found a place in Colorado Springs called Charity International, and they picked a five-year-old boy in Indonesia," said the mother of the boys who set up the stand.

    Someone complained, and police showed up, telling the young kids they needed a permit to sell lemonade.

    After news of the incident broke, lemonade company Country Time reached out to assist the boys, offering to pay for permits and fines for any kid opening a lemonade stand that summer.