THE VERY BEST NEWS
Iconic downtown hot dog shop re-opens after 3-year absence
POTTSTOWN >> This is simply the “very best” kind of story to tell.
After more than three years standing empty, downtown Pottstown’s iconic Very Best wiener shop has re-opened under new ownership.
The shop will be open from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Mondays through Wednesdays, and from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays.
It was purchased and rehabilitated by Gilbertsville native Josh Souders who “has been cooking since I was 14.”
The opportunity came to him, he said, through a Facebook post forwarded to him by the mother of his best friend. And word of the store’s “soft opening” Wednesday, spread the same way — very quickly.
“I had a soft opening yesterday for family and friends who had helped me. I sent out a dozen or so invitations, but somehow we had what felt like 100 people in here,” Souders said with a laugh from the grill Wednesday as he continued to put together orders for the steady stream of customers.
For nearly a year, rumors about the shop re-opening have circulated both on social media and the old-fashioned way,
by word-of-mouth. That’s probably because Souders did most of the rehabilitation work himself, with a few friends, and the work went slowly.
“It was in bad shape, part of the ceiling was caving in,” he said.
Souders grew up in New Hanover Township, and graduated from Boyertown Area Senior High School in 1992.
“My dad was born and raised in Pottstown so these were our stores. We came for shoes at Boyer’s Shoes, went to Smith’s Stationary when it was back to school time, and if we were good, he would take us for hot dogs at The Very Best,” he said.
When he got older, “my friends and I would ride our bikes down Route 663, and we would come racing down that hill, sometimes passing the cars. When my mom found out, she was pretty mad,” Souders said.
After running a deli in Avalon, N.J., for seven years, “I was looking for a place to expand, and my friend’s mom sent me this Facebook post about the Very Best and I thought ‘well, that’s a shame.’ And then the next day, two more people sent me the same post.”
“So I thought ‘well it must be fate.’”
There are many things that Very Best regulars will recognize, including Kathy Dise, who waited tables in the shop for 30 years.
It was through her that Souders got the recipe for the shop’s famous sauce. “It was supposed to be a secret, but Chris said he didn’t want it to die out, so he passed it on to her and she gave it to me.”
“I made it and it didn’t seem quite right, and she told me ‘you have to use certain brands,’ and that made it better, but it still wasn’t right. And then I thought chefs never follow the recipe exactly and I played with it a while until I got to where I wanted it to be,” Souders said.
“Some people have told me it’s exactly right, others admitted they don’t remember exactly what it tasted like, I just want to make sure it’s good,” he said.
Beech Street resident Ron Long was anxious to find out for himself.
“I grew up in Royersford but I used to come up here for the dances and we would often end up here for hot dogs, and their milkshakes were awesome too. I think I spent more time here than where I lived,” Long said. “Now I live in Pottstown and I drive by here all the time, and I saw the sign and said ‘oh my God, they’re open,’” he said.
Valley Forge resident Candace Boyd was on hand for the opening as well.
“They always had just the best hot dogs and I would always end up here on Friday night when I was a teenager,” she said. “Josh is a friend of my husband’s so I had to be here for opening day.”
Another friend, this one a high school classmate of Souders, was on hand as well.
“We were here last night too. I’ve had three meals here in two days. The food was delicious, so we kept coming back,” said Eric Buchanan. “My son (Zachary, 15) says the name of this place should be ‘The Very Best Restaurant.’”
In addition to re-creating some of the original menu and tastes, Souders is also re-creating some of the original decor.
Alongside the booths, vintage mini-juke boxes remain and a full-size juke box at the back of the restaurant advertises songs that were a hit in 1971.
Vintage video games like Pac-Man and Centipede are lined up along the wall and others are in the works to be set up and played as well.
The Very Best has been a Pottstown landmark since 1921 — first serving hot dogs, then expanding the menu to include pies and other desserts, hamburgers, hoagies and cheese steaks. Breakfast became popular in recent years, as did homemade soups and salads.
But The Very Best was best known for its hot dogs — plain, with sauce, mustard and onions, cheese or sauerkraut.
The Very Best was founded by Christ George, who emigrated from Greece in 1912 settling in Pottstown. George bought a shoe shine and hat cleaning business, according to information on a website for The Very Best. He began selling hot dogs, and as they caught on, he moved from his South Hanover Street location to 252 E. High St.
Over the years, The Very Best became more popular. George developed a sauce to top the dogs. And in 1924, Amanda Smith, founder of Mrs. Smith’s Pies visited the restaurant with some pies, which George began selling.
The restaurant was featured in a national Mrs. Smith’s Pies ad campaign that touted the number of pies sold at The Very Best’s modest three-stool lunch counter.
In the early 1970s, George turned the business over to his two sons-in-law: Christy Christ and John Brower. The pair ran the business until 2007, when it was sold to Amy Shuster and Joe Miller, who were unable to keep the shop going in the midst of the 2009 recession.
“We were doing wonderful until the economy crashed, and when people started losing jobs we immediately started to see a decline. That’s when all the struggles began,” Shuster told The Mercury in 2015 when the shop closed said. She added that the downtown just doesn’t have the same level of foot traffic, especially in the evening.
“We’ve been trying to hold on, but it got to the point where we can’t hold on any longer,” Shuster said then. But that may be changing. “I think Pottstown is coming back,” said Boyd. “I keep seeing more and more positive things happening, with more stores opening. It seems like it could become the next Phoenixville.” Souders hopes so. “We’ve tried to keep a lot of it the same, just freshen it up a bit. It’s an icon and I realize I’ve got big shoes to fill,” he said.
But for now, he’d just like to get some sleep.
“In the last five days, I’ve had five hours of sleep,” he said. If things keep up at this pace, he said, he may have to consider hiring more help.
“They always had just the best hot dogs and I would always end up here on Friday night when I was a teenager. Josh is a friend of my husband’s so I had to be here for opening day.”
— Valley Forge resident Candace Boyd