Morrison, Co - 20 February, 1995 -

What could be simpler than a hot dog? Not much, said Kristin and Coe Meyer, wife-and-husband owners of Woody's Chicago Style Hawaii Inc. And that may be the secret to their success. The unassuming hot dog is easy to sell. When people step up to the cart, they go back in time to a place when things were simple for them, like a ball game, carnival or a Saturday afternoon shopping trip. In fact, hot dogs are so easy to sell, the Meyers (no relation to Oscar) pulled in $******* last year. Their cart at Eagle Hardware and Garden at the Waikele Center alone made $*******, Coe said. But the Meyers do not just sell hot dogs, they also sell the carts, the logos and training as part of their franchise program. To date, they have sold 16 of the $35,000 packages, and are working on a deal with a major home improvement retailer to open two dozen more in Texas. Kristin was born in Southern California, Coe in Chicago. After living in Chicago for years, they moved to Colorado. "We got tired of the cold in Chicago. We moved from the big city to the mountains," Kristin said. There, they had a bar called The B-Lift Pub, near a ski resort. "The door had a bad location and throngs of people would pass by without ever knowing we were there," Coe said. He needed a way to get people to stop and see the entrance. That is when he got the idea for a hot dog cart. The public's reaction was nothing short of fantastic. Coe was most impressed with the "overwhelming acceptance of it. People became enamored with the whole thing," he said. "They'd come up to you and talk about the simplicity that was implied by that business." A year later, in 1986, a Colorado company called Precision Carts Inc. offered them the opportunity to be its distributor and sell carts in Hawaii. Hawaii was particularly attractive as a venue for their hot dog operation because it had a "365-day-a-year vending climate," Coe said, No rent in this high-rent state made this low-cost operation even more attractive. The Meyers soon opened their first cart in front of the Home Improvement Center in Iwilei, now Kmart, and made $****** in business the first year. This incarnation of Woody's Chicago Style is not the same company started in Hawaii in the 1970s by Mike Wood. But when Coe and Kristin needed a name for their hot dog business, they came up with ones like Hula Dogs, Island Dogs and the Great Hawaiian Hot Dog Co. Recognizing the cliche and wanting something more personal, they kept running into the name Woody's Chicago Style. So with a little research, Coe found the name was still active but the company was not. He approached Wood and offered to purchase the name. "We had a quality product and wanted assurance he would use quality products," said Wood. Coe signed the agreement and bought the name for $500, "and ... he's lived up to his agreement," Wood said. For those who do not like hot dogs, Coe said there is a difference between his product and the cheap ones. "Don't buy the hot dogs from meat packers - those are the ones your mother warned you against," he said. Buy hot dogs made by a sausage maker, a real sausage maker does not say "parts is parts."

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