I decided to have hot dogs for lunch today, and a thought occured to me: why aren’t hot dogs as ubiquitous as hamburgers in the US? Hot dogs are not an unpopular food item by any stretch, but their success pales beside that of hamburgers. The old standard fast food chains are based around burgers, but have only had hot dogs for limited times as an experiment. There are all kinds hamburger restaurants from fast food to high quality to sit down, and most ‘ordinary’ sit down restaurants have hamburgers on the menu. While there certainly are hot do restaurants, there are nowhere near as many, and they aren’t consistently on the menu of sit down restaurants. They both seem about as easy for a restaurant to keep on hand - both use buns, similar condiments, and hot dogs usually have easier toppings, and both are easy to put in a wrapper and eat by hand.
Any theories on why hamburgers are so ubiquitous and hot dogs aren’t, or is it just one of those random things?
WAG: I blame convenience stores, who wants to eat one of those?
More seriously I think there’s a wide spread belief that hot dogs are made from either left over substandard meat, or not meat at all.
My Brazilian pal said that hot dog places are the big thing all over in Brazil, with mounds of toppings to choose from. He was amazed when I made him a burger; he thought they must be highly complicated to make as they’re so rare there.
I challenge the OP’s basic premise. Both burgers and dogs are standard at every single cookout I’ve ever attended. There are numerous hot dog-based chains all across the country. There’s a hot dog cart on just about every street corner downtown in every major city in the country. I’d be willing to bet that dogs far outsell burgers at sports events.
As to why seemingly more restaurants “specialize” in burgers, I’d guess it’s because a hamburger is something that is fairly easy to make up a unique recipe in-house and have a “signature” burger that you can only get there, as opposed to hot dogs which almost nobody makes in-house and the vast majority of establishments are just heating up pre-made, precooked sausages and slapping them into a bun.
Yeah, with burgers you’re starting for the most part with raw ingredients, so you don’t have the markup of buying a premade hot dog, and you can customize it more if you need to without needing the sort of expertise and equipment necessary if you were making your own hot dogs.
But, no, hot dog carts are not common around here, health laws, mobile food licenses, and all that. I’m not even sure the last time I saw a real hot dog cart anywhere.
You may be surprised as to how many “burger places” sell hot dogs as well.
Here’s one possibility: not that many people like grilled (as opposed to boiled or steamed) hot dogs, and it would be too much trouble to have both a grill for burgers (and, say, chicken) and some separate way to cook the hot dogs.
Here’s another: the presence of hot dog carts, but very few (if any) “burger carts,” means that burger restaurants will be more apparent.
This may be circular logic, but I think it’s because hot dogs are viewed as casual/“not-serious” food, whereas burgers are actually viewed as a real meal, especially at places like Red Robin.
I’ve been to plenty of cookouts with neither and a huge number with hamburgers but not hot dogs, breaking out the grill just to cook a few burgers is vastly more common that doing so for just hot dogs or for both in my experience. I certainly didn’t say that there were zero hot dog chains, but the number you’re calling ‘numerous’ pales in comparison to the number of hamburger chains, and even further if you compare ‘chains that have hamburgers’ with ‘chains that have hot dogs’. And what about chains that specialize in neither? If I go to a bar that cooks food, I’m going to be really surprised if they don’t have hamburgers on the menu, but hot dogs are pretty rare. If I go to a diner, same thing. And again if I go to a general ‘american food’ sit down restaurant. Even for non-American cuisines, ‘hamburger’ is the default ‘lets put something on the menu for that white-bread relative who didn’t really want to come here’ item. Those hot dog carts are generally sharing the street with restaurants that serve hamburgers (and are nowhere near ‘every street corner’), and sporting events are a one-off exception.
If I’m driving along the interstate and want to stop for food, finding a hamburger is pretty much automatic, but I’d have to look for a hot dog place and while they’re not rare, it’s certainly possible that there wouldn’t be conveniently on my route. And there are generally going to be half a dozen or more options for hamburgers to every option for hot dogs. If I am at a bar or brewery and decide to order from their cooked food menu, odds are there is a hamburger on there, but rarely is there a hot dog.
If one looks at the top 10 US burger chains, as far as I can tell, only Sonic, Five Guys, Hardees, and Carl’s Jr. offer hot dogs – the latter two are effectively the same chain, and they have, it appears, only one hot dog (a chili dog) on their menu.
Smaller chains and local burger places – yes, that may well be a different story. As you note, one generally cooks a hot dog differently than a burger, and the big burger chains may well not want to have the extra equipment just for hot dogs.
I also am a SW side of Chicago resident, of my whole life actually, and I do see hotdog carts sometimes. Not just at random corners, no, but both Fat Tommy’s and Fat Johnny’s have carts that can be hired for parties/events. Although I think Fat Johnny (senior) just passed, so they may have retired that. I’ve also seen hot dog carts at Kennedy and Beverly parks during little league and softball season. So they exist, but not just randomly rolling down the sidewalk or anything like that.
The shape of the hot dog and its bun may have something to do with this. Burgers are relatively flat. You put the bottom bun down, you put the flat burger on it and it sits on top of it securely. You put the lettuce, tomato, and other toppings on it; they sit on it relatively easily; then you put the top bun on it and it holds everything in place.
Hot dogs are long, narrow, and encapsulated by the bun on the sides, not the top and bottom. You put the hot dog in the bun. Then you pile all the toppings on it. The hot dog is rounded, not flat; things do NOT sit easily on top of it, especially not a bunch of slippery little diced toppings. They fall down along the sides. You put the sauce on it, the sauce drips down the sides, most likely getting on the sides of the bun as well. There is no bun on TOP of the hot dog to enclose everything, the way there is on a hamburger. You put the hot dog in a little paper box; every time you remove the hot dog from its box, more shit spills off the top of it and makes a mess.
Hot dogs don’t appeal to folks who do not like the taste or texture of processed meat. (They taste like tubular bologna to me.) Hamburgers, on the other hand, are simply ground beef, with little or no additional processing.
Hot dog joints are so ubiquitous in Chicago you don’t NEED hot dog carts. And in Chicago I would take a Chicago fully-dressed hot dog over most hamburgers.
There are places and situations where hot dogs are more popular than hamburgers. Sporting events, for instance. A lot of it has to do with convenience: it’s easier to eat a hot dog while watching a ballgame. Street vendors are another example. It’s a lot easier to cook a hot dog than a hamburger from a push cart.
It is true that many more fast food chains have hamburgers as their main attraction. One reason may be that people like fries with their hamburgers. Fries are a big moneymaker for fast food joints, and most people seem not to like them with hot dogs. People will eat chips with hot dogs, but packaged chips probably don’t have the profit margin of French fries.
I just searched on Yelp for ‘hamburger’ in Chicago, IL (which is a very hot-dog leaning area), and of the top ten hits, only three had hot dogs on the menu. Locally, out of the last ten places that I’ve eaten at that have a burger on the menu, the only one that has a hot dog was the one I sought out specifically because I knew they served hot dogs. Out of the big fast food chains, none of McDonald’s, Burger King, Hardee’s, or Wendy’s (the ones I think of) have a hot dog on their standard menu. I don’t find those results surprising at all, and I don’t really think that scoring 3/10 in a place that is known for hot dogs is that many.
I don’t buy that not that many people like grilled hot dogs, as they’re a bog-standard thing to have at cookouts. I’m pretty sure that a high portion of hot dogs sold are grilled, and certainly a major portion of ‘cooked at home’, and most restaurant dogs that I’ve encountered are cooked on a grill or flat fryer.
Same reason you don’t go out to eat Spam, canned beans, or hamburger helper. Hot dogs are a processed food. People don’t go to sit down restaurants to eat processed food.
Hamburgers saw an uptick in credibility at some point in recent history, and that hasn’t happened to hot dogs (yet). It’s also worth considering that, of the few common varieties of both, hamburgers might combine with other ingredientes (basically bacon and cheese) in ways that are more appealing to most people. I think a good Chicago style dog is a work of art but maybe it’s not for everyone. Wieners definitely have an ick factor for a lot of people (ETA: as indicated above)