How We Made Money Off Our Teeny-Weeny Trailer

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They were just two girls with a crazy idea and a desire to buy a teeny-weeny trailer. (Photo: Hamptons Aristocrat)

It’s 3 p.m. on a sunny Saturday in Bridgehampton. Some forty people are milling around a lush backyard to celebrate the 32nd birthday of the model and television personality Kim Stolz. A giant inflatable Slip ’N Slide dominates the backyard, but no one has been brave enough to test it. Cold drinks are served in flamingo beer Koozies.

But the real star of the party is a lovely, rustic, teeny-weeny trailer serving delicious farm-to-table artisanal snacks. This is the Hamptons Aristocrat — the brainchild of Stolz’s wife, Lexi, and her business partner, Louisa Young — a mobile catering company and portable pop-up restaurant that made its debut this summer.

The Hamptons, the beach towns on the far eastern shore of Long Island, have no shortage of fancy restaurants. There are so many that one would think nabbing a reservation would be a certainty on a Saturday night.

Not necessarily so.

And besides, the residents of the beach towns here on Long Island often prefer to have things come to them. Enter the Aristocrat.

Related: The Burning Desire to Own a Teeny Weeny Trailer Explained

Last year, Stolz and Young began batting around the idea of a restaurant on wheels. What if they could create one?

To start, they needed a teeny-weeny trailer. The two women bought the trailer on eBay while sitting in a Starbucks.

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Fresh local steamed clams from the Aristocrat. (Photo: Hamptons Aristocrat)

“We got in to a bidding war over a souped-up camper that we ultimately lost, which left us feeling slightly defeated,” Stolz said. “We got up to get a fresh cup of coffee and we kept digging around for hours and hours — then we found our girl, in a backyard in Pennsylvania.”

The trailer they fell in love with was all dressed up in tacky blue stripes with a purple and yellow fleece decor. The previous owner had big plans to turn her into a gyro truck. When the two women won the auction they began to scream, causing the entire Starbucks to go silent. They looked at one another and said, “It looks like we just bought ourselves a food truck.”

The trailer before…..(Photo: Hamptons Aristocrat)

One week later, the trailer arrived in Southampton. The blue was as vibrant as the photos, but the inside was even creepier than the ladies expected. They called it their office for the first few weeks, and would sit inside at the “dining-room table” mapping out the design of the inside, countertops, shelving, and refrigeration. They interviewed contractors and electricians, a majority of whom looked at them like they were crazy.

To fully refurbish the trailer, they found some amazing local talent — and weren’t afraid to get their own hands a little bit dirty.

Related: Where to Go in a Teeny Weeny Trailer in 2015

“We selected only paint colors that had a food in the name, and put up hand-painted Indian tiles,” Young said.

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Farm-fresh local meat and produce are the Aristocrat’s specialty. (Photo: Hamptons Aristocrat)

They gutted and stripped all the walls down to the aluminum siding before installing new cabinets and countertops. The new lighting is all from Restoration Hardware, and the counter tiles were imported from India.

Early on, the women realized that the trailer had a pretty bad leak on the ceiling, so they decided to remove the skylight. All of the work was done in the dead of one of the worst winters New York experienced in decades.

“Working inside of a metal can in below-freezing weather wasn’t easy,” Stolz said.

They won’t reveal the final cost of the refurbishment, but they will say it took a lot of “tears of joy and sweat, and that it wasn’t a drop in the bucket … but she was worth it.”

Now the trailer is the event caravan and prep kitchen. She even made her debut as an omelette station at a summer kick-off party out at the beach.

The Aristocrat now offers a seven-course tasting menu — using the local and organic produce from local farms — for $125 per person. The teeny-weeny trailer-turned-food truck is now a profitable business, bringing a restaurant-style experience to the backyards of hundreds of beach-goers.

Related: My Midlife Crisis: I Bought a Teeny Weeny Trailer to Travel America

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A teeny-weeny event. (Photo: Hamptons Aristocrat)

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