The Average Hot Dog Is Consumed In 6.1 Bites

National Hot Dog Day in July celebrates a summertime staple on a bun. Enjoy one piping hot and add some relish and mustard to go! One thing we want to know – is it a sandwich or not? Find the answer here

This day pays homage to the frankfurter, the footlong or wienie, wiener, wienerwurst or even red hot. They taste just as great no matter what we call it.

• 9th Century BC – Sausage is one of the oldest forms of processed food, having been mentioned in Homer’s Odyssey as far back as the 9th Century B.C.
• 1200s – Frankfurter Wuerstchen are distributed in Germany on the eve of imperial coronations.
• 1867 – Charles Feltman, a German immigrant, is credited with inventing the modern hot dog bun
• 1869 – Heinz is Founded Henry J. Heinz,
• 1871 – Charles Feltman, a German-American restaurateur, opened up the first Coney Island hot dog stand, selling 3,684 dachshund sausages in a milk roll during his first year in business.
• 1883 – Oscar F. Mayer is established in Chicago
• 1893 – sausages became the standard fare at baseball parks.
• 1893 – An important year in hot dog history. In Chicago that year, the World’s Columbian Exposition brought hordes of visitors who consumed large quantities of sausages sold by vendors. People liked this food that was easy to eat, convenient and inexpensive.
• 1893 – Hot dogs and baseball are officially paired together in St. Louis by the owner of the St. Louis Browns, now known as the Baltimore Orioles.
• 1900 – the year when the term ‘hot dog’ first appeared in print in “The Oxford English Dictionary.”
• 1905 – Hebrew National is founded. Hebrew National is known for its kosher beef hot dogs, made with 100% kosher beef.
• 1916 – The man most responsible for popularizing the hot dog in the United States was Nathan Handwerker, a Jewish immigrant from Poland. An immigrant from Eastern Europe, he and his wife Ida borrowed $300 from friends to start their business on Coney Island in 1916. By the Depression, Nathan’s hot dogs were known throughout the United States.
• 1941 – The popular restaurant chain Carl’s Jr started as a hot dog cart on July 17, 1941, in Los Angeles.
• 1959 – Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev ate a hot dog during the first visit of a Soviet Premier to the US in 1959 and admitted that Americans had the Soviets beat at sausage making
• 1971 – Hot Dog Day is first celebrated by students in Alfred, New York — the hot dog’s affordability is something that many students favor.
• 1987 – Frankfurt, Germany, claims to be the originator of the hot dog and celebrated the hot dog’s 500th birthday in 1987
• 1987 – Applegate Farms is founded. They specialize in natural and organic meats, including uncured beef and turkey hot dogs
• 2018 – consumers spent more than $3 billion on hot dogs in U.S. supermarkets
• Over 25 million hot dogs are sold at baseball stadiums each year.
• That’s enough to circle the bases 36,000 times.
• 7-Eleven sells the most grilled hot dogs in North America – 100 million annually.
• The average hot dog is consumed in 6.1 bites. (average-sized mouth tested)
• From Memorial Day to Labor Day every year, Americans typically consume 7 billion hot dogs. That’s 818 hot dogs consumed every second.
• According to the National Sausage and Hot Dog Council, mustard is the most commonly used condiment, preferred by 32% of Americans.  The second-place finisher, with 23% of the vote, is ketchup and chili, which takes the third-place spot with 17% of the vote.
• The true origin of the hot dog is a mystery.
• There are various theories about where the name “hot dog” actually came from.  The most common attribution, however, is to a cartoonist named Tad Dorgan, who drew a cartoon depicting the “hot dachshund sausages” being sold at a New York baseball game and called them “hot dogs” because he could not spell dachshund.
• Los Angeles residents consume more hot dogs than any other city
• A hot dog is a sausage but a sausage isn’t necessarily a hot dog
• Miller Park in Milwaukee is the only Major League Baseball ballpark that sells more sausages than hot dogs per season
• Mickey Mouse’s first on-screen words were “Hot Dog!”
• President Franklin D. Roosevelt served hot dogs to King George and Queen Elizabeth. The king ate two
• The average weight of a fully loaded baseball park hot dog vendor’s bin is 40 pounds
• Miller Park in Milwaukee is the only Major League Baseball ballpark that sells more sausages than hot dogs per season
• Nathan’s hot dogs were reportedly gangster Al Capone’s favorite food.
• On July 4th, Americans consume about 70 million hot dogs. That, too, is a lot of hot dogs! If you laid out all of these hot dogs end-to-end, they would stretch from D.C. to L.A., more than five times over!
• The average American eats 60 hot dogs per year, which is more than 20 billion hot dogs consumed each year nationally.
• NASA has approved hot dogs as a regular item on Apollo moon flights, Skylab missions and space shuttle flights.
• According to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council (NHDSC), Americans purchase 9 billion hot dogs per year from grocery stores!
• Adding in what would be consumed at restaurants or ballparks, the NHDSC estimates that the total number consumed in a year is approximately 20 billion hot dogs!
• There’s a reason hot dogs and their buns don’t match. When hot dogs were first sold in the United States, they were not sold in grocery stores. So, for the hot dog cooks ordering wholesale quantities, ten seemed like a natural choice for packaging. When wholesale bun and roll bakeries started to bake the matching buns, they worked with pans that baked long rolls in groups of four that are then stacked to make eight – not ten.
• Los Angeles residents consume more hot dogs than any other city.
• Hot dogs are more popular than burgers in baseball stadiums.
• Hot dogs are more popular than burgers in football stadiums.
• Hot dogs are more popular than burgers in basketball stadiums.
• 7-Eleven sells the most grilled hot dogs in North America – 100 million annually.
• 7 billion – the estimated number of hot dogs consumed by Americans from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
• 150 million – the number of hot dogs consumed during the Fourth of July holiday.
• 20.4 million – the number of hot dogs eaten by baseball fans at major-league ballparks during the season.
• 350 million pounds – the amount of hot dogs purchased from retail stores by Americans.
• 20 billion – the number of hot dogs consumed by Americans in a year.
• 70 – the average number of hot dogs consumed per person each year in America.
• 95% – the percentage of homes in the United States that consume hot dogs.
• 15% – the percentage of hot dogs purchased from street vendors
• 9% – the percentage of hot dogs purchased at ballparks.

Sources:

National Day Calendar

National Hot Dog and Sausage Council

Mobile-Cuisine

Hot-Dog

Just Fun Facts

Potato Rolls

The Hot Dog

National Today

Days of the Year