“I don’t know if I can do this,” Mark Reitman says. He’s stopped in at Martino’s Italian Beef in Milwaukee to order a quick Polish–American cheese, mustard, pickle on the side–but someone behind the counter has striped the dog with ketchup by mistake. Reitman stares at his lunch. “I never had ketchup on a dog before,” he says. “If I like it, I can’t admit that I do.” Finally he decides to make the best of the offending condiment by eating some fries with every bite of Polish. “It all goes to the same place,” he murmurs, as if to console himself.
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That was where he first got the idea for Hot Dog University. Every once in a while a shopper would see how much business the cart was doing and ask about franchise opportunities. Because franchising involves high legal costs, training new independent vendors seemed like a more attractive option. “I’m a teacher at heart,” he explains. After Prime Outlets’ management jacked up his rent “substantially,” he decided it was time. He founded Hot Dog University in June 2006. He offers the course once a month, usually in a conference room at the Radisson Hotel in Pleasant Prairie, near Kenosha. So far, he’s had 20 students, mostly midwestern middle-aged men looking for something to do in retirement. “I’ve had lawyers. I’ve had people that are execs at Abbott Labs,” he says. He recruits mainly through word of mouth and online forums, like Roadfood.com, that focus on small eateries.
After lunch Reitman takes Council to the Restaurant Depot, a warehouse store for restaurateurs, where he continues his lecture. “These are the sweetest little buns you will ever find anyplace,” he says, grabbing a box of S. Rosen’s. “Touch ’em. These are fresh.” He whizzes down the enormous aisles, pausing only to deliver the occasional condiment edict: “If you have the wrong pickle on a hot dog, you’re in trouble. You want a kosher pickle. And not the Claussen’s stuff.” In the frozen food section, he points out the dogs to avoid. “See the big globules of fat? You will not see those in Vienna Beef.” And in an aisle full of kitchen gadgets, he reveals the best thing to keep waxed-paper sheets from flying off the cart: a bacon press.
Still, Reitman easily demonstrates the value of several of his other lessons–like how little freebies make the customer happy. When four young women come up to the cart to place an order, he offers each a piece of gum. “Dubble Bubble! Yay!” he says. “Yaaaaay!” they repeat in unison and proceed to order a substantial amount of food.
