‘An American tradition’ — Two Upper Valley residents open hot dog stands

America and hot dogs. A love story for the ages. This summer, two Upper Valley entrepreneurs with a passion for cooking are adding their own chapters.

For the past few months, Travis Talbert, 42, of Lebanon, has been touring his hot dog cart around the city on Wednesdays and Thursdays, while over in North Hartland, 41-year-old Spencer Braley has set up his lunchtime operation, Spenny’s Hots, on his neighbor’s lawn on Route 5.

Late one Wednesday morning earlier this month, Talbert set up shop in the AutoZone parking lot on Miracle Mile.

The store’s manager, Rick Babcock, agreed to let Talbert use the parking lot for free a few months back. To him, Talbert’s food cart, and ones like it, “bring people together,” he said in an interview at the store.

“Plus everything else is hella expensive,” added 18-year-old Josiah Mullen, a store employee.

At Talbert’s cart, hot dogs sans casing, what he referred to as “more ballpark style,” go for $2, while beef dogs are $4 and big dogs, or quarter pounders, are $6. Chips and soft drinks cost a dollar.

Talbert wants to add more fixings to his menu, such as sauerkraut, chili and onions, but the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services prohibits pushcart operators from selling items other than frankfurters and packaged foods.

The regulation “kind of holds me back in a lot of things I want to do,” he said. His goal for next year is to upgrade the cart, which he purchased for about $3,400, to a full-sized food trailer.

For now, he sticks with ketchup, five kinds of mustard, including a chipotle flavor, and several types of spicy peppers.

Running the hot dog cart is a passion project for Talbert, who also works in security at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center.

“I wanted to do something for myself,” he said.

A veteran, he gained cooking experience while serving in the U.S. Navy.

In a given week, Talbert takes home between $800 and $1,000 in sales. Ingredients such as hot dogs and buns, which he purchases once a week at BJ’s Wholesale Club, the bulk store in West Lebanon, cost about $220.

Upper Valley Dogz and Catering (Talbert chose to put a “z” on the end of “dog” so people wouldn’t confuse the business with a humane society) has become a popular lunch spot among AutoZone employees like John Longshaw, who chatted to Talbert from his car while he got ready for service.

“When he’s out here, I’m out here,” Longshaw said.

At noon on the Wednesday earlier this month, Talbert switched on a Bluetooth speaker and Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” resounded across the AutoZone’s hot parking lot.

Soon, Bethany Averine and Ella Kerin-Herrick, of Lebanon, lined up for lunch, while siblings Nik and Natalia Gioia waited behind them.

Around 12:30, Longshaw polished off his second dog of the afternoon: a quarter pounder with chipotle mustard and hot peppers.

“I always love your hot dogs,” he told Talbert.

Unlike some vendors Longshaw has visited in New England, Talbert’s dogs are never rubbery and they have plenty of depth of flavor, he said.

Enjoying a hot dog is “an American tradition,” said Talbert, who noted that Americans consume roughly 20 billion hot dogs a year, according to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council.

Originally from Florida, he remembers his dad indulging in a hot dog and a beer when the two of them watched a Florida Marlins (now the Miami Marlins) baseball game or attended a cookout on the Fourth of July.

But in the Upper Valley “no one has a good hot dog anywhere,” Talbert said.

For him, what makes a “good dog” is an all-beef interior with a natural casing and “not too expensive,” he said.

Indeed, with the exception of Talbert’s operation and Spenny’s Hots, hot dog carts are few and far between.

For his part, Braley, an Enfield native, inherited the operation from his father-in-law, who tried running the stand back in 2022, before health complications forced him to turn off the steamer.

Braley offered to take over the cart, starting in 2023, because “something I’ve always loved to do is cook for people,” he said.

His wife, Serena, recalled the first time Braley cooked her a steak on a small hibachi grill the couple purchased at Walmart, back in 2007. “It was just so good,” she said in a recent interview on the family’s front porch.

Braley operated the cart for a season, then took last year off to deal with some mental health challenges and make business plans. Now he’s back with an upgraded operation that includes a Blackstone griddle for cooking burgers and sausages, an extra table for assembling orders and a new tent to keep off the heat that he sets up on the edge of his neighbor’s yard at 610 Route 5.

Part of Braley’s aim is to fill a need in his neighborhood, which, with the exception of the Hartland Diner at 159 Route 5, doesn’t have much in the way of lunchtime eats.

Spenny’s Hots is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., or later, if Braley feels like it, on Mondays through Thursdays.

The current menu includes casual lunch fare such as all-beef dogs, Angus beef burgers, Italian sausage, steak and cheese, potato chips and fresh-squeezed lemonade.

“I call it the best in the Upper Valley,” Braley said of his lemonade.

Served in 32 oz. cups at $7 a piece, his version is based on a family recipe, but with less sugar. “It’s tart and sweet, you get both,” he said.

“Oh no, that’s perfect,” said Braley’s friend, Theresa Hayden, after taking the first sip from her lemonade.

Braley estimates he makes about $1,000 a week from sales, the majority of which he reinvests in the business, with the goal of buying a food truck in a couple years’ time.

Opening Spenny’s Hots has marked a milestone for Braley. He struggled with drug addiction for years before becoming sober in 2017.

“I never really developed the skills to work under somebody, and (Spenny’s Hots) gave me the opportunity to rebuild who I was,” Braley said. “I think it’s important for people to understand that you can make it out of there and you can keep going.”

Marion Umpleby can be reached at mumpleby@vnews.com or 603-727-3306.