It’s now OK to be a ‘Cat and love a dog.
Sharing a counter with Varsity Grill, the Dog House provides a permanent home for specialty hot dogs at Willie’s Food Court in Norris University Center.
Though the Chicago-style dog is easily the most popular of the hot dogs, no item offered at either station rivals the popularity of the buffalo chicken wrap, said Alton Taylor, a cook at Varsity Grill and the Dog House.
“It’s so popular we have specials every week to make more wraps,” Taylor said, pointing to this week’s special fried chicken wrap.
Like the wrap and another Varsity Grill menu item, the chicken gyro, hot dogs in Willie’s Food Court began as a limited-time offer.
Those offers, which cycle through the food court every two weeks, offer a reliable dry run for possible new offerings on the Norris menu. The specialty hot dogs offered at Varsity Grill passed their tests, especially around baseball season, said Chris Gargiulo, Sodexo’s general manager of retail dining at Northwestern.
“When we did the limited-time offers, they were always big sellers,” said Pam Yee, Sodexo’s district marketing manager.
Hot dogs had been available behind the counter in Norris’ Paws ‘n Go C-Store for more than a year when Gargiulo and his staff decided they would like to offer a wider variety of customized hot dog to mirror the more successful specialty hot dogs occasionally offered at Varsity Grill. Due to the limited size of the convenience store, though, there was not enough room to expand, he said.
“If we could have made those hot dogs self-service and put a couple more toppings, it probably would have been a lot more popular,” Gargiulo said. “We’re sometimes just constricted by the space we have.”
The hot dog roller was moved and a sign was put up. The station offers four specialty hot dogs, including a chili dog, a cheese dog, a Chicago-style dog, and the “NU Dog,” which comes with chili, coleslaw and onions. The chili and cheese toppings can also be ordered over fries.
Since the Dog House opened on March 31, more hot dogs have been sold than during all of last quarter, Gargiulo said.
But the hot dogs have yet to achieve the astronomical success of the buffalo chicken wrap.
The wrap, which became a permanent menu item last winter due to high demand and lobbying by former ASG president Jay Schumacher, outsells hamburgers, cheeseburgers, double hamburgers, double cheeseburgers and bacon cheeseburgers combined.
Gargiulo said his staff considers a number of factors when making a change to their dining locations, including students’ comment cards and formal and impromptu focus groups. The food court was last altered this past fall, when Windy City Deli absorbed the sliver of counter occupied by WildBAO, a former Chinese bean cake station. However, the idea to open the Dog House arose from other concerns.
Music and Weinberg sophomore Yoshi Nakano said he does not usually eat at Norris, and the changes don’t bother him.
“A hot dog is kind of a weird choice,” Nakano said while eating a salad from Norris’ Big Ten Cafe.
The Dog House’s hot dogs might have a while to go before they can play fetch with the buffalo chicken wrap. Still, students have another dining option at a station that might have reached its limit of the variety of permanent products it can offer, Gargiulo said.
“If this is what they want and they’re going to come, (the selection) behooves everybody, it’s a win-win scenario,” he said.
