The $99 Hot Dog Pack That Chicago Locals Still Swear By, Despite The Price

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As well-known as New York might be for its hot dogs, there is one other city in America that may rival it: Chicago. Chicago is famous for its hot dogs, and the people there take them extremely seriously. Don't ever let anyone in Chicago catch you putting ketchup on a hot dog. While there is surely some disagreement among locals about who makes the best dog, Vienna Beef has long been a Chicago favorite. You can even go to their website and buy a 3-pack of their hot dogs for $99. It may sound a little steep to those who haven't had them before, but there's a reason they're so popular.

To be clear, for $99.95 you are getting a good amount of hot dogs. This is three two-pound packages, each containing 16 wieners. That's 48 hot dogs total, which works out to $16.65 per pound or just over $2 apiece. That is not bargain basement pricing compared to what you would pay for a pack of Bar S franks at Walmart that works out to just over eight cents per wiener, but you are also getting a better product. Compare those prices to what you pay for the average hot dog at a ball game. In 2024, that was $5.47, according to Statista. So Vienna Beef is much more reasonable with that in mind. But why would anyone pay that much if they didn't have to?

Vienna Beef has been making franks since 1893. It was that year that Emil Reichel and Samuel Ladany debuted their all-beef hot dogs at the Chicago World's Fair. The franks proved to be so popular that the pair started the Vienna Beef Company together. The Chicago-style hot dog followed soon after, featuring an all-beef hot dog with its delicious snap on a poppy-seed bun topped with sweet green relish, yellow mustard, a dill pickle spear, chopped white onions, tomato, sport peppers, and a dash of celery salt at the end. It's been a cornerstone of Chicago fast food ever since.

Reviews for Vienna Beef franks online paint a clearer picture of why these hot dogs are so popular. The packages don't just say Chicago's hot dog for nothing. The word "best" pops up time and again in Amazon reviews — with one reviewer noting that "If you want an authentic Chicago hotdog, you must start with Vienna beef hotdogs." One Illinois native wrote, "I really miss my childhood growing up in the best city of the world ... The ability to be able to bring a little of that here to California and remember how wonderful those times were is priceless."

Outside of Chicago, Vienna Beef hot dogs are harder to find. There are diners around the country that carry them, and they're the franks in Shake Shack's amazing hot dogs. You can order them online, but they are not an everyday presence for non-Midwesterners. In that way, they are almost like a Chicago secret, something that the locals can take pride in as being theirs. Maybe that pride, in part, contributes to customers' willingness to pay a premium price for these hot dogs.