Meet Rudy Kovach | Glizzy Man

We had the good fortune of connecting with Rudy Kovach and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Rudy, maybe we can start at the very start – the idea – how did you come up with the idea for your business?
One day in quarantine I’m playing Fortnite with a random person and I’m wearing a hotdog skin in the game and the random person goes that’s a nice glizzy skin. So I googled what is a glizzy and it’s a nick name for hotdog. My old business was working on houses and that work dried up really quick when Covid came so all I did was play video game to kill time. I wanted to get into a food business because they stayed open during Covid lockdowns. Once that person said glizzy a light bulb went off in my head and said that would be a great name for a hotdog business and that is how I came up with my next business plan.

What should our readers know about your business?
So we do a lot of traveling within the United States and always check out food spots and who doesn’t love a good hotdog? So I made sure to check out the hotdog spots in other states. You find that these other states have some pretty crazy creations that actually taste good and I always thought my city needs this , my city would love this. So once I came up with GLIZZYS idea I knew I wanted to do hotdogs but didn’t have the funds to open a restaurant so I went the cheap alternative and started looking at carts for sale. They were still pretty expensive but on the search I found a person that was making them and selling them. I thought if he could do it so can I. So I went online and found some solid blue prints and got started building my own. I wanted to stand out so I build a giant hotdog with our business name and stuck it on the side of the cart. In Cleveland every hotdog cart has the same exact toppings , no matter which stand you went to you could always order the same exact thing and that’s is where my hotdog eating in other states came into play. First cart in Cleveland Ohio where you could get more then just chili , kraut , onions , mustard and ketchup. We have all that and a lot more! We make Chicago style hotdogs that come with tomatoes, pickles spheres, sport peppers , we have elote style hotdogs that come with cotija/hot Cheetos dust , corn , Mayo , bacon and Pico de gallo , we have bacon wrapped dogs that come with cheese and jalapeños and our home made glizzy sauce. I’m most proud of how far we came in so little time. We came in 2nd place for best hotdogs in Cleveland our first year open and the company that came in first serves dogs inside of progressive field so that 2nd place don’t hurt as much when we’re right behind a company that big. We’ll get that first place one day soon .It most definitely sounded like a easy business to open but it was actually a lot harder then I thought . You are dealing with food and the city takes that very seriously so you have to do a lot of stuff to obtain your food license and then do that every single year again. It’s definitely worth the struggle though! I want the world to know that I build this entire business from scratch and every day we make a bigger name for ourselves and if we can make it big then so can you and hopefully this story gives you the motivation you need to succeed!

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I would take them to Ohio city . We have the west side market which has all kinds of mini businesses that have exotic foods. The strip in Ohio city has some great bars and breweries. We would have to take a 40 min drive to go to cedar point for the day. We would have to go to edge water beach for a day , grab a burger or a mixed drink from the big concession stand. And also hit up down town Cleveland and check out the rock and roll hall of fame or the Science center.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I want to dedicate my shoutout to my customers for keeping us in business and my fiancé laurisa for seeing my vision the same as me and doing half the work.

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