Trailer for the documentary Dog Days.
Plunging into the colorful, micro-entrepreneurial underworld of street vending in the nation’s capital, DOG DAYS follows two unlikely business partners as they challenge the status quo by offering Washingtonians a gourmet alternative to the ubiquitous hot dog. Coite, an unemployed industrial engineer with no kitchen experience, comes under the culinary guidance of his idiosyncratic Aunt Deane and her harp to launch “Food Chain.” Staking his meager life savings on the new business, he hopes to help the city’s 300 remaining street vendors compete with the food truck craze that’s driving hotdog customers away in droves. Working against him is the regulatory strangulation of his industry at the hands of the DC government. The stakes intensify when his first customer, Siyone, a former refugee from East Africa, pushes already strained relationships with her suppliers to sell Coite’s Jerk Chicken wraps, a risk she must take to provide for her four children.