A Frankly Tough Challenge : Selling the Lowly Wiener Calls for High Creativity

For the nation’s largest hot dog chain, the hunt for business has finally come down to this: the Veggie Dog.

No baloney.

Vegetarian hot dogs will be test-marketed next month at several Wienerschnitzel locations in Southern California. The wieners will be made from soy--with nary a fleck of meat. Think of it as pizza without cheese. Or Twinkies without cream.

This is a serious bid to increase business by appealing to the untapped niche of vegetarians. Such unconventional actions are what hot dog chains must do to survive in the 1990s. As most fast-food fans continue to hanker for hamburgers, the nation’s hot dog chains--from Wienerschnitzel to Nathan’s Famous--are searching for new ways to lure consumers.

Hot dog chains have had a rough go of things. Just ask ex-Chicago Bears Coach Mike Ditka, who couldn’t coax Chicagoans to buy red-hots at Ditka’s Dogs. It closed faster than you can say “frankfurter.”

And just as the big summer season was approaching, a university study earlier this month linked excessive hot dog consumption to cancer. Recognizing the nutrition consciousness of consumers, one billboard for Wienerschnitzel asks with a wink, “Does relish count as a vegetable?”

“Hot dogs have lost their cachet with the American public,” said Milford Prewitt, senior editor at Nation’s Restaurant Business magazine. “A restaurant hamburger simply has more of a perceived value that people are willing to pay for.”

Fast-food consumers buy about 10 hamburgers for every hot dog. Some argue that these buying habits are not about to change soon.

“Hot dogs will forever take a back seat to hamburgers,” said Robert Sandleman, a Brea-based consultant. “The unfortunate reputation is that anything that ends up on the factory floor goes into a hot dog.”

Most big hamburger chains won’t touch hot dogs. Although McDonald’s tried selling them in Canada, it has no plans to test them in the United States. And after Burger King tested wieners in two cities a few years back, it quickly sent the dogs packing.

Carl’s Jr. was originally founded as a hot dog stand, but you won’t find hot dogs there now. Carl’s briefly brought them back a few years ago--selling the Hebrew National brand to present an image of high quality. A lot of good that did. Sales sputtered, and hot dogs were again given the boot.

Still, no matter what the big burger chains do, there are some people who passionately believe in hot dogs. There are few more ardent about it than Dennis Tase, president of Wienerschnitzel, a division of the Newport Beach-based Galardi Group.

“There’s no telling how many hot dogs I eat a week,” said Tase, who visits three or four outlets a day, often taste-testing hot dogs at each. “There’s nothing better than a double-cheese chili dog.”

After several flat years--during which it closed some poorly performing locations, the 300-unit Wienerschnitzel chain now expects to open nine stores over the next 18 months. It is even testing the idea of teaming up with Winchell’s Donut Houses.

Wienerschnitzel thinks it can boost business by poking fun at itself with self-mocking ads--even referring to itself as “Chez Weenie.” The object is to grab the attention of young consumers “who do not believe most advertising,” said Beverly Blake, vice president of marketing.

Wienerschnitzel billboards all over Southern California show portraits of jumbo oozing chili dogs next to headlines such as “The culinary equivalent of mud wrestling” and “It’s cheap. It’s messy. Hey, you are what you eat.”

Some vegetarians were angered by one billboard with a photo of a fat frankfurter that said, “Vegetarians can eat the bun.”

That ad, created by the Los Angeles agency Stein Robaire Helm, prompted one vegetarian activist to phone Tase and propose that Wienerschnitzel start selling vegetarian hot dogs.

“With 12 million vegetarians in the United States, why ignore us?” posed Gene Bauston, executive director of Farm Sanctuary Inc., a nonprofit farm animal protection group in Orland, Calif.

“The guy called me so many times, he finally convinced me to try it,” Tase said.

But Wienerschnitzel is about to find new competition in Southern California. Nathan’s Famous Inc., the Westbury, N.Y.-based chain that helped popularize the hot dog with a single stand on Coney Island, will test the California market with stands scheduled to open at a few Unocal gas stations.

“Hot dogs are the one fast-food segment where there is no recognized national brand leader,” said Wayne Norbitz, president of Nathan’s. “We aim to become that.”

The chain has 184 units in 17 states, and more than half of those were opened over the last two years. “We’re like a 78-year-old start-up company,” Norbitz said.

Aside from the ballpark, one of the more popular spots to grab a hot dog in Southern California is at the mall. That’s where the Hot-Dog-on-a-Stick chain sells 9 million corn dogs a year, said Diane Barham, president of the Solana Beach-based chain. Her father founded the 93-unit chain 50 years ago with a single location in Venice Beach.

Barham said malls are a good spot to sell corn dogs because shoppers often have just one free hand.

Several years ago, “when everyone was bad-mouthing hot dogs,” Barham saw sales slipping and knew she had to take action. So she dumped beef and pork wieners and started serving turkey dogs.

Although she heavily promotes the turkey ingredient at each stand, she certainly hasn’t changed the product’s name. After all, who would buy turkey-on-a-stick?

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Hot Dogs: Cold at the Counter

Hot dogs rank among the least popular of all items sold at fast-food outlets in Southern California. A survey of 600 Southern California residents asked them to name the last fast-food item they had purchased as a meal. The responses:

Hamburger: 34.2% Pizza: 19.1 Chicken*: 18.2 Mexican Food: 11.3 Submarine sandwich: 4.4 Hot dogs: 3.3 Breakfast items: 3.0 Sandwiches other than submarine: 2.5 Salads: 1.4 Seafood: 1.1 Don’t know: 1.2

* Chicken items include sandwiches, nuggets, and chicken on the bone

Source: Sandelman & Associates, Brea, Ca.