Regional Profile – Sabrett Hot Dogs, New York, Part 1

Sabrett Hot Dogs

Sabrett is a registered trademark of Marathon Enterprises, a major East coast regional meat supplier to the trade and consumers.

Although best known for their natural casing hot dogs, Marathon makes and distributes a range of products, including hot sausage, kielbasa, salami, pastrami, corned beef,garlic rings, and condiments.  The company has an honored history.

The son of a baker, Marathon’s founder, Gregory Papalexis, graduated from NYU in 1948, took out a $2,500 GI loan to buy his father’s bakery, and began selling rolls all over Manhattan.   He delivered his baked goods in a Cadillac, as it had “the biggest trunk he could find.”

Papalexis developed a hot dog line for push carts, called “House O Weenies”, and over succeeding years acquired a number of competitors, including Sabrett, in 1989.

Sabrett had started in 1926; the two co-founders originally wanted to call it “Sabre” but found that name in use by another company.  Tongue-in-cheek, they went with “Sabre-ette”, which evolved quickly into Sabrett.

The company Papalexis started now sells over 35 million pounds of hot dogs annually, to push carts, of course, but also to groceries in 18 states, as well as restaurants, schools, and institutions.

Next in this series:  The New York Hot Dog Push Cart Biz.

 (Ed. Note – Marathon Enterprises, Inc., furnished sample foods for this series).

 

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