Bread and hot dog companies have been conspiring against consumers for years. At least I think they have. It’s the only explanation I can come up with for why hot dogs come in packs of ten, while hot dog buns only come in packs of eight. You have to buy four packs of the former and five packs of the latter to reach equilibrium. And unless Joey Chestnut is coming to your BBQ, that’s too much. Now, an interested third party is getting involved. Heinz Ketchup has launched a campaign to make hot dogs and buns come in matching package sizes.
To celebrate National Hot Dog Month, Heinz Ketchup has started a petition at Change.org. The Heinz Hot Dog Pact has a simple goal. It calls for bun and wiener companies to finally come together and match how many of each item comes in a standard pack. That way you don’t end up putting two hot dogs on slices of American bread. Sure, it’s fine. But it’s definitely not fine, you know?
“We’ve seen our fans through social media express their outrage about the bun-to-hot-dog ratio issue for years, and we know there must be a better way,” said Daniel Gotlib, Associate Director, Brand Building & Innovation, Kraft Heinz Company, in a statement. “We believe that the time for change is now and we are hopeful. As the iconic condiment that has been making hot dogs complete for over 150 years, we saw an opportunity to champion this issue on behalf of hot dog lovers across North America and help show manufacturers why they need to put an end to unequal packs.”
Heinz Ketchup
This is a dream a long time in the making. One shared by many and immortalized by Steve Martin in 1991’s The Father of the Bride.
Technically he had it far easier back then. At 12 buns you only need three packages of hot dogs and two packages of buns to reach food equilibrium. Since then big bread and big hot dog made the math far more expensive.
As of this writing the petition already has more than 12,500 signees. Well within the campaign’s goal of 15,000. When it does reach that number we know just the food to serve at our party.
We’ll just have to make sure we invite at least 40 people who want a hot dog. They haven’t actually fixed this absurd problem yet.