A dream come true, one unique hotdog at a time

CAMERON WILLIAMS | THE CHARLOTTE POST

Kwindarius Sapp prepares hot dogs at Culinary Cart’s brick-and-mortar restaurant on Old Statesville Road. Sapp launched his business with a cart just before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and added the stand-alone location in August 2024.

Kwindarius “Q” Sapp is living his dream.

Sapp, owner of Q’s Culinary Cart, started his hot dog truck after being laid off from his restaurant job in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, Sapp has a takeout restaurant at 8432 Old Statesville Road that’s open 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday as well as the food truck.

“I started the hot dog cart right before everything got crazy with Covid,” he said. “About a month later is when I got laid off. I told myself, ‘All right, let’s see if I can make a living with this hot dog cart,’ but during Covid the whole stay at home thing was happening so I would go to apartment complexes and grocery stores and set up. I was deemed an essential worker so that was my chance to go out and spread the name around.”

Sapp said he would sit in apartment complex and supermarket parking lots scrolling through job opportunities because there was a good bit of business but not enough to be sustainable. But he was determined not to give up on the food industry, where he worked since he was old enough to take a job. What started as a hotdog cart turned into a food truck offering a wide variety of options in early 2022.

Sapp opened his stand-alone location in August 2024 and business has been steadily growing.

“People tell me they saw me on Facebook or Instagram a lot of times, so the business is still growing,” he said. “We are closed on Sundays and Mondays but during the week I’ve got a lot of returning customers and new customers that often say someone else told them about me or my cart and to come check me out. So, it has been good. I told my fiancé the other day that I was a little scared when I signed the lease [to the building] but it has been good.”

Sapp’s hotdogs and smashburgers are unique to his own experiences. The BLT Dog was the result of working in the restaurant business when there wasn’t time for lunch breaks. He could always whip up a BLT sandwich quick and easy, so why not a hotdog?

Same for the “Buff Glizzy,” which has blue cheese, buffalo sauce and diced celery on it. He was working at a pizza place where he shredded chicken as a topping with an oil base with buffalo sauce and blue cheese crumbles.

“Every type is unique,” Sapp said. “They are all inspired from events or memories from the past. Our Country Boy [chili, slaw, ketchup and mustard] is one of our most popular. The BLT Dog is a big hit as well.”
Sapp said people who want to start their own business should go for it. It takes hard work, but if you’re passionate, strive for your dreams.

“I tell lots of people the same thing,” he said. “I personally wouldn’t say just one day drop everything and say, ‘I’m going to go do it.’ You have to do it strategically. I feel like if you create something and can build it while you have [a job] that is stable, that will hold you over.

“You will know when it’s time to say, ‘OK, I can start to do this [full time]. You’ll start to see what you need to do financially for whatever you do to be stable and see if [the profit] is consistent enough for it to be a full-time thing. Find a starting point. Whatever that has to be. You don’t have to jump all in. Set goals and stick to them.”

Sapp said growth is the goal, but what that looks like is an unknown.

“The vision is to expand,” he said. “I’ve seen that vision but right now, I am just trying to stay within myself. I am at a point where I am trying to conquer what is in front of me. I just opened this stand-alone spot and so I am conquering this in the now and time will tell what is to come. I have always envisioned myself as a multi-unit and that is the goal, but just conquering where I am at now is what I am focused on.”

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