#213 1916 · Nathan's Famous (Nathan Handwerker) · Food & beverage / retailcostly-signal
A nickel hot dog looked too cheap to be safe, so Nathan Handwerker put doctors in front of his stand who never said a word
the problem
A price low enough to win customers was also low enough to make them suspect the product
background
Nathan Handwerker had worked as a roll-slicer for Charles Feltman, Coney Island's dominant hot dog vendor, before opening his own stand at Surf and Stillwell Avenues in 1916 and undercutting Feltman's ten-cent frankfurter with a five-cent one — the price of a subway ride. The cut was real: Handwerker ran on thinner margins and higher volume, but to a customer standing on the boardwalk it read as a warning sign, not a bargain.
The obvious suspicion, openly discussed among Coney Island visitors at the time, was that a hot dog that cheap couldn't be made of the beef or pork a ten-cent frank used — that Handwerker was cutting the meat with something a lot less appetizing. No amount of the seller's own reassurance could dispel that, because the seller was exactly the party with the incentive to lie about it.
the move
Handwerker borrowed white coats and stethoscopes from Coney Island Hospital staff, dressed men in them, and had them stand at his stand eating hot dogs all day, saying nothing and making no claim. Passersby drew their own conclusion — if doctors were eating them, the meat had to be safe — without Handwerker ever having to assert it himself.
the payoff
Sales climbed sharply, and once the subway reached Coney Island in the 1920s the stand was reportedly selling on the order of 75,000 hot dogs some weekends; the previously unnamed stand grew into the company known today as Nathan's Famous.
what came after
The doctor stunt became a stock example in sales and marketing writing of borrowed authority as persuasion, and Nathan's Famous later leaned into the story itself, briefly reviving its original five-cent price for a centennial promotion (minus the fake doctors) as a nod to the tactic that built the brand.
filed under
references
- [1]The 1916 stunt that made Nathan's Famous a Coney Island hot dog iconEphemeral New York, 2021ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com
- [2]The Untold Truth Of Nathan's Famous Hot DogsMashed, 2019mashed.com