Why Our Hot Dog Business is a Stand Out Franchise in the QSR Industry

World’s largest hot dog franchise has won millions of fans by serving unpretentious food at an affordable price point

If you were going to make a list of everything that truly represents America: the Statue of Liberty, the American Flag, Major League Baseball — that list would be incomplete without the hot dog. This is where Wienerschnitzel comes in with the stand out hot dog franchise.

Every one of us has a memory from childhood of going to a baseball game or hanging out in the backyard watching fireworks, and eating a hot dog. This is a food that evokes nostalgia, warm feelings of family, summer vacations, and the can-do spirit of American optimism.

If you want to truly understand just how much Americans love hot dogs, consider these facts compiled by The Hot Dog and Sausage Council:

• Los Angeles residents consume more hot dogs than any other city (about 31 million pounds), beating out New York and Philadelphia.
• Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport consumes SIX times more hot dogs, 725,000 more than Los Angeles International Airport and LaGuardia Airport combined.
• On Independence Day, Americans will enjoy 150 million hot dogs, enough to stretch from D.C. to L.A. more than five times.
• During peak hot dog season, from Memorial Day to Labor Day, Americans typically consume 7 billion hot dogs. That’s 818 hot dogs consumed every second during that period.
• According to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council, Major League Baseball fans expected to consume about 18.3 million hot dogs and nearly four million sausages this season.

From sea to shining sea, Americans love hot dogs — and since 1961, Wienerschnitzel has been at the forefront of elevating the hot dog in American culture.

“There are a lot of food options out there, but if you ask someone on the street about the last time they ate a hot dog, they’re going to tell you a story,” says JR Galardi, President of Wienerschnitzel. “It’s always something like, ‘I was at the ballpark with my son and I caught a foul ball.’ By just mentioning the words ‘hot dog,’ a person will go into another world and tell you a positive story. I’ve been in this business my whole life, and I’ve never met a person who didn’t love hot dogs. We’re lucky that the hot dog has been our core product since 1961 and we’re able to deliver a positive experience every day.”

We’re changing the perception of the hot dog

While millions of Americans love hot dogs, they are reluctant to be open about it. Wienerschnitzel is out to change America’s perception of the hot dog by telling the truth about how a hot dog is made, what ingredients are used to make it, and the pride Wienerschnitzel takes in preparing our hot dogs for our millions of fans.

In 2019, Wienerschnitzel partnered with the American Advertising Federation as the official corporate sponsor of its 2019 National Student Advertising Competition, to allow students to come up with a marketing campaign that educated American consumers about the food they secretly love. What they came up with was perfect: 80% of Americans eat dogs, and only 20% admit it.

“Hot dogs get a bad rap, and it’s not fair because it’s not accurate,” JR Galardi says. “We’re making a conscious effort to change the perception of the hot dog. It’s not just random ingredients thrown together to make a whole. It’s actually high-quality cuts of meat that I would cook on my grill at home — they just happen to be put into a processor and then put into a casing. It’s no different than your lunch meat, it’s just in a different shape. We take pride that we use USDA-approved meat in our hot dog, and then we use proprietary spices and smoke the meat to perfection over hickory wood. You’ll never taste another hot dog that tastes like ours does. We take a lot of pride in the way it’s made and the products that we serve.”

Nostalgia is a main driver in the economy, and Wienerschnitzel is capitalizing on this trend

If you’ve been paying attention, millennials and Gen-Z have taken over the culture, and they are completely obsessed with their childhoods. That’s why Disney World is being overrun by groups of adults, and it’s why Hollywood is rebooting what seems like every single movie and television show from the 90s. Even new shows like Stranger Things use nostalgia as though it was the main character.

In the food world, the trend is no different. The hot dog has suddenly become hip because of its unique ability to transport people back to their childhood and evoke positive memories — and we say it’s about time.

“Now is a really exciting time to invest in a Wienerschnitzel hot dog franchise,” JR Galardi says. “The hot dog is increasingly becoming a part of pop culture. It’s as much the hipster food as it is the blue-collar food and the family food. It’s what you bring your kids to, it’s what brings back good memories. It’s only continuing to go up.”

Ready to invest in Wienerschnitzel, a stand out hot dog franchise?

With open territory, new store designs, and a new generation of nostalgia-driven consumers, Wienerschnitzel is a worthy investment for an entrepreneur who wants to bring the best tasting hot dog on the planet to their community. With industry-leading support, a proven business model, and 10 years of continual same-store sales increases, the time to invest in a Wienerschnitzel hot dog franchise is now!