One of those all-American hotdog carts, the kind you see in Belltown late at night, will cost you about $500, give or take. And, for another $700, there's an outfit in Chicago that will teach you how to run it. (Sample from the weeklong curriculum: dress the dog, not the bun.)
That would be Vienna Beef, longtime purveyors of tube steaks to vendors in the Windy City, and looking for new markets. "We have been trying to export Vienna to other cities for years, but it's very difficult," says ceo James Bodman. So, a year ago, he came up with the notion of a training program. Enrollment surged with the unemployment rate, as layoff victims started looking for a fast track to entrepreneurship.
Vienna, for its part, hopes its graduates will crack new markets around the country. "Hot Dog University has given us dozens of new accounts around the country, and it's priceless for us," Bodman tells Chicago Business.
Here in Seattle, Joe Jeannot recently sold Slo Joe's, his hotdog storefront in South Lake Union and is tending bar at Toulouse Petit. (In its place, a sandwich shop called Yellow Dot Cafe.) Jeannot knows from hotdogs, however, and would scoff at shelling out tuition for his nighttime vendors, where a five-spot buys you the definitive "Seattle dog" (i.e., with cream cheese).
Which brings us to the latest Harris poll: many Americans attribute a recent illness to "something they ate." That's the takeaway, as it were, for the food industry. Says Chain Leader, an trade publication, "the perception that a food-attributed illness poses a major problem for our nation's food manufacturers and suppliers. In fact, seven in ten (69%) of those who attribute an illness to a food item think they know what made them sick."
Not to mention what makes them fat: 57 percent say sedentary lifestyle, the remainder say individual food choices and eating habits. Right, like eating hotdogs.
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