Off-duty IRS attorney opens hot dog stand

Hundreds of thousands of federal workers have been sent home due to the government shutdown. One of them uses his new free time to sell hot dogs.

“It’s an expression of self,” Isaac Stein, 31, owner of “Shyster’s Dogs,” told Business Insider at his hot dog stand in the NoMa neighborhood of Washington, DC. “It’s me having fun artistically.”

Stein has a day job: He has worked for three years as an attorney at the Internal Revenue Service, where he handles tax regulations regarding employee benefits. But for the past three weeks, he’s been working as a full-time hot dog vendor at the corner of First and M Street NE.

The idea for the hot dog stand came to Stein months before the shutdown freed up his schedule. He said he made the decision to start the business in June, even though it took months to obtain all the necessary permits. Stein said he invested a “five-figure sum” in purchasing all the equipment.

By the time he was ready to leave, it was September. He had initially planned to operate the stand after hours, on Thursdays, Friday evenings and weekends. “To be honest, Thursday was a little ambitious,” Stein said. “It’s difficult to function in the office without getting enough sleep, and I want to be good at my legal work.”

Then, on October 8, he was “furloughed” – essentially suspended from his job until the shutdown ended. This turned his side hustle into almost a full-time job, and he now typically sells hot dogs from noon to 5 p.m. on weekdays.

Stein’s hot dog stand is loaded with humor. The name “crook,” a slang word for a deceptive or unethical lawyer, means wanting to “make the legal community laugh,” he told Business Insider.

“Part of what I’m doing with my expression here is there are many layers of irony,” Stein said. “One of the reasons is that I’m a lawyer and I do everything right. I have all the necessary licenses and I pay taxes.”

On his menu, he offers the “SHIRT OFF MY BACK” for $1,000. And the menu itself is pretty simple: If you order “The Only Choice,” you’ll get a mustard and sauerkraut hot dog for $10. If you order a “Hot Dog with the Wrong Toppings,” you can have other toppings, like ketchup, but you will have to pay more. This option costs $11.

“From a young age, I wanted to punish people for putting ketchup on a hot dog. I have no idea why anyone would want that. But to be commercially viable, you have to have it,” Stein said. “The price difference reflects the incentives: I want people to do it the right way.”

So far, Stein says his hobby is working well for him. He serves 40 to 50 customers a day, he said, and makes $200 to $300 in profit each day. But for him, the hot dog stand was less about making ends meet and more about embarking on a creative project.

“It gave me a chance to get more involved in the community,” Stein said. Some of his customers, he says, have very specific orders and have become regulars. “If I can bring that into their lives, it makes me really happy.”

Still, Stein said he looks forward to returning to his day job, whenever that happens.

“Government tax lawyers don’t do it for the money,” he said. “Everyone wants to go back to work, because we really love what we do.”