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Health & Fitness

Once Upon a Time

The story of Nathan Handwerker, a Polish immigrant who earned eleven bucks a week and used it create a New York institution.

Some of us just pass by Nathan’s fast food restaurants, some stop in for a hot dog or take the kids. We might pick up a package of Nathan’s franks for a barbecue. None of us give it much thought, but Nathan was a real guy. It’s one of the many American success stories, it’s also a great New York story.

Nathan’s American story really begins with German immigrant Charles Feltman, who was the first person to put German sausages on buns right in Coney Island.  Somewhere around 1867 (give or take), Feltman created the “red hot” or what’s known today as the “hot dog” and built himself a small empire selling them for 10 cents each, right on Coney Island’s boardwalk.

Feltman (a butcher by trade) started selling his hot dogs from a push cart, but they became so popular, he eventually opened several restaurants, beer gardens, food stands and an amusement park. He did it all, just by selling hot dogs for a dime. His main restaurant was on 10th Street, and spread out between Surf Avenue and the Boardwalk. It’s not easy to imagine now, but in those days hot dogs were something of a delicacy; the rich and famous would travel from Manhattan and Long Island to Coney Island just to try one of Feltman’s “red hots.”

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Nathan Handwerker (a Jewish immigrant from Poland) worked at Feltman’s restaurant as a bun slicer (buns apparently didn’t come pre sliced, back in the day). He was reputed to be the hardest-working, fastest bun slicer at Feltman’s.  He earned eleven bucks a week and all the hot dogs he could eat. He wasn’t the only person at Feltman’s that would become famous; Eddie Cantor and Jimmy Durante worked there as singing waiters. Cantor and Durante recognized that Nathan had the drive, brains, passion and guts to go into business for himself, and encouraged him to give it a shot.

Nathan Handwerker saved $300 and opened up his own hot dog stand in 1916. He improved Feltman’s recipe, added some veal to the mixture and some extra spices. Nathan used better ingredients than Feltman’s, but he knew in order to compete with the iconic hot dog creator and boardwalk favorite, he’d need to offer a better price too. Nathan priced his hot dogs at a nickel a piece, cutting Feltman’s price in half.

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No one wanted ‘em. The people thought that since they were so cheap, they had to be inferior. Nathan underpriced his hot dogs. He tried offering free pickles with the hot dogs, but no one was interested; they walked right by Nathan’s and flocked to Feltman’s. Nathan was failing.

The next idea was a good one, and there are two different versions of the story.  One version is, Nathan walked to the nearest hospital and invited the doctors and nurses to eat at his place every day for free, as long as they wore their Hospital attire. Docs had to wear their lab coats and stethoscopes, nurses had to wear their nursing uniforms and they’d get their free lunch. The idea was to show the public that the hot dogs were good enough for medical professionals, which pretty much meant they’d be good enough for anyone.

The other version of the story is, Nathan invested in some lab coats, stethoscopes and nurses uniforms, cleaned up some of Coney Island’s homeless, dressed them up in the hospital garb and fed them for free in his restaurant. The passersby would see the hungry impostors enjoying their their free meal, and decide to give the nickel hot dogs a try.

Either way, the brilliant, last resort marketing plan worked. Before too long, people were walking past Feltman’s to eat Nathan’s hot dogs, after all, that’s where the doctors went.  As they say, the rest is history.

It’s a great story, and it could have only happened in America. Nathan’s is Coney Island, and Coney Island is Nathan’s. It’s a New York story of an immigrant who founded a restaurant chain that’s been in operation since 1916, and it all started with eleven bucks a week and a three hundred dollar investment.

When I think of how the country has changed since 1916, I can’t help but doubt Nathan’s story (or Feltman’s) would even be possible today. In 2011, we’re shutting down lemonade stands because the children didn’t pay the $500 fee for a permit, we shut down garage sales for the same reason. The red tape, laws, regulations, taxes, fees, insurance mandates, zoning rules and fines would most likely have blown Nathan’s fire out at the very beginning. What was once a three hundred dollar investment would now be hundreds of thousands of dollars and layers of bureaucracy to wade through. I wonder how many would-be Nathans are being crushed every day, under the heavy burdens imposed by every layer of government in our “free country.”

It’s hard to imagine now, but once upon a time in America, we encouraged entrepreneurs. Now, we punish them.

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