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Friday, June 15, 2007

My Old Job Returns!

via Mom:
Kosher Hot Dogs are available once again at Jacob's Field.

Starting Sunday, June 17th (Father's Day) kosher hot dogs will be available at the new Nak-Nik hot dog stand at Jacob's Field. The stand will feature the Abeles & Heymann (OU-Glatt) hot dogs, which are considered the premium kosher hot dogs in NYC.

The stand is under the kosher supervision of Rabbi Granatstein of Green Road Synagogue, and the hot dog equipment will be locked up when not under supervision.
The stand will be ran by Gazi Fedur, the Lebanese Christian man who owns the Subway at the JCC, and will feature special toppings including Tibor's beef-fry. Tibor's Italian Sausage will also be available. The stand is located on the first base side near the subway, and there will be on-site Hashgacha at all times.

Special thanks for Earl Lefkowitz and Tom Sudow who created the original concept, and brought kosher hot dogs back to Jacob's Field. Earl currently markets kosher bison meat across the US and Tom is the Executive Director of the Beachwood Chamber of Commerce.
I loved working at the old kosher stand when I was 17, 18 years old, along with Pobody's Nerfect & Groovin'. Either Earl or Tom (whichever could come) would man the beer, while Groovin' took care of the sodas and chips and getting us supplies; Pobody would do the grilling after I'd come early and grilled the first 150 or so, and I would switch over to cashier and management, basically. We'd pull in about $2,500-$4,000 a night (of which we would get about $75-85/game - I made $1,800 on 22 games the last summer) which would go to the Jewish Federation [EDIT: My mother reminds me that while the Federation may have run the stand, the money may have actually gone to some charities. I *do* know that they didn't pay us, but rather gave the money to our schools, and our parents would pay us based on what they no longer had to get the school for 'give or get' or some such thing.], we'd get free hot dogs and unlimited fountain soda (Dr. Pepper is the best fountain soda), and we'd get to see the games sporadically when there was no line and from after we closed down in the 7th inning. The stand we manned was in the upper deck right behind the plate, which obviously is a great spot; they had a lot of come-from-behind wins back then, so that was a nice bonus.

I remember that despite our having 3-4 people manning the stand, we would still outsell the 8-person stand which sold everything that was right across from us; that's probably because everyone would rave about "those Kosher dogs!" which were the same price as the regular ones. I'll admit it, they were really good hot dogs. Then there was the older floor manager who would tell us that we can't have the tip cup out, but had to keep it under the counter... even as he stuck a couple dollars of his own in (we'd pull in about $50-100 a night in tips which we'd split); and we had the area boss who looked 30, was absolutely brilliant, and we only discovered a month in was actually just 19 years old. Finally, there were the constant requests and comments we'd get from customers asking about Pobody's Nerfect, to which we kindly explained that trying to hit on 14/15-year olds is really, really strange when you're 20-40 years old. (Of course they wouldn't believe us, insisting that she had to be 18, 19 years old. Whatever.)

Anyway, it's great to see that the kosher stand is back, and all of us here at SerandEz wish our old job the best of luck!

8 comments:

  1. awesome!!! but i thought the old stand wasn't really kosher...i called like every rabbi in cleveland to find out about it, and no one knew anything.

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  2. Nice!
    At least this time they'll know better than to let guys from "that" school (a"h) near a cash business ;)

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  3. Memorial services will be held at the Q starting this evening.

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  4. Kosher hot dogs are one of the best parts of a baseball game! And at Yankee stadium they are only a quarter more than the regular ones.

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  5. This has the correct name for the hot dog mfrs.:
    http://www.abeles-heymann.com/

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  6. KM - I don't know why... unless you're talking about either the stand after we left or perhaps the other stands, that some people were questioning for the simple reason that they didn't have Jews running it. I never understood why people had a problem with that, as there was always someone coming around...

    OC, G - :(

    G - LOL!! That was before my time. They re-opened with people like me to clean up the image. :P

    Annie - Of course, that means they're like $5...

    Bob - Thanks. My mom just sent me the same correction from Frum Cleveland.

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