FSB Presents: Great Moments In Inviting Consumers To Delude Themselves

Nathan Handwerker had a problem: his product's greatest selling point was also its greatest weakness.

Born in 1892 in Poland, Nathan emigrated to New York with his family in 1902.  In 1915, he found work at Feltman's hot dog stand on Coney Island.  Charles Feltman hadn't invented the hot dog.  He'd just had the idea to put it in a bun, instantly transforming an obscure German sausage into fast food.  Feltman's was a success and a favorite of vaudville performers like Eddie Cantor and Jimmy Durante.

When Feltman's raised their prices from five to ten cents, Cantor and Durante worried they'd starve.  They encouraged Handwerker to go out on his own.  In 1916, Handwerker did.  His hot dog stand, literally within sight of Feltman's, sold his 19 year-old wife's sausages.

It was the first hot dog that was 100% beef.  The public wasn't so sure.  The low price led to rumors of horse meat and dubious sanitary conditions.

Who wouldn't trust a place where the potato chips cost twice as much as the hot dogs?

Handwerker found a way to combat the public's perception.  He offered free franks to the doctors and nurses at Coney Island Hospital so long as they wore their white lab coats while they ate.

This photo may have been doctored.

It was a brazen act of non-lying.  The public, Handwerker hoped, would see doctors eating his food and infer some sort of medical endorsement where none existed.

You may think this stunt only a bit of 1900's wackery, but many accuse President Obama's White House of the very same thing.  When 150 doctors were invited to attend a 2009 White House rally in support of health care, they were supposedly asked to show up wearing their lab coats.  For those who forgot, the White House is accused of handing out extra coats they had on hand.

Some medical personnel took Handwerker up on his offer, but reportedly not enough for his campaign to succeed.  It may have been a display of turn-of-the-century medical ethics.  Or maybe a free hot dog wasn't enough of an inducement to wear one's lab coat over a suit on the beach in the middle of summer.

With the physician turnout underwhelming, Handwerker did the only reasonable thing:  He dressed vagrants up in lab coats borrowed from a costume shop and fed them hot dogs.  He even posted a sign, "If doctors eat our hot dogs, you know they're great."  Not healthy.  Not good for you.  Not sanitary.  Just great.

Did the stunt work?

Today, Nathan's Famous takes in $50 million a year.  In company owned restaurants, 246 franchises, limited menu programs with other retailers (like Aunt Annie's), and supermarket sales, Nathan's sold over 400 million hot dogs in 2010.  They've even got fifteen restaurants in Kuwait.

Still,  Nathan's isn't exactly Nathan's.  Among others, they license their trademark to SMG, Inc. to make their fast food and supermarket franks, John Morrell and Co. (a subsidiary of Smithfield Foods) to make some fast food and cafeteria franks, and ConAgra to make their french fries and onion rings (for restaurants and supermarkets).  According to its 2010 annual report, Nathan's Famous does not appear to make any of its own food.

There is no denying this essential fact, however:  If Nathan's Famous did not offer a consistent product that people liked to eat, no amount of trickery in the world could have kept them in business for ninety years.

Some people can eat 68 at a time.

But for fostering a false public perception in the pursuit of sales, Nathan Handwerker earns the first ever spot in the FSB archives of Great Moments In Inviting Consumers To Delude Themselves!

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Much of the information in this article comes from The Encyclopedia of Jewish Foods by Gil Marks.