Make no buns about it: Astros fans love $1 dogs
On average, Minute Maid Park has sold about 43,500 hot dogs every Tuesday since 2018 — that’s over 4 miles of meat per game
It’s Tuesday. You’re at Minute Maid Park for an Astros game. Then you remember it’s Dollar Dog Night.
Naturally, you head to a concession stand, grab two, three, maybe even four $1 hot dogs, and load them up with all the toppings you can handle. Life is good.
But have you ever wondered just how many of those $1 dogs Minute Maid Park sells on a given Tuesday?
Short answer: a lot. While exact totals aren’t readily available, Aramark, the ballpark’s longtime food and beverage provider, did supply the Chronicle with estimates and data for $1 hot dog nights from the past five seasons.
The results were eye-opening.
To prep for a Dollar Dog Night, Aramark said it takes the number of tickets sold and multiplies that by the season’s current average of Tuesday dogs sold per person. For this year, that average stands at 1.1 dogs per person.
So, for the 28,762 fans who attended the Astros’ June 5 win over the Royals, Aramark planned to sell more than 31,638 hot dogs.
That’s enough dogs to line the warning track around Minute Maid Park 13 times, according to a company spokesperson.
Aramark also estimated a crowd that size would use a whopping 4,750 pounds of ketchup, 2,375 pounds of mustard and 3,500 pounds of relish.
On average, Minute Maid Park has sold about 43,500 hot dogs every Tuesday since 2018, according to Aramark.
To put that in perspective, 43,500 six-inch hot dogs would span roughly 4.1 miles if lined up in a row.
That number also pales in comparison to the park’s single-night record. One Tuesday in 2019, Minute Maid Park sold over 54,000 hot dogs, a a whopping 5.1 miles of dogs.
As for this season, an Aramark spokesperson said the company has already sold more than 200,000 dollar dogs.
That pace would rival 2021 in terms of total sales, Aramark says, when Minute Maid Park sold enough dollar dogs to make a full loop around Beltway 8.
For reference, Beltway 8 is 88 miles long.
That’s a lot of hot dogs.