In our plane of existence, molluscs are the second most diverse animal phylum in sheer number of species, losing only to arthropods. They are, however, perhaps the most diverse animal groups in body plans and shapes. The better-known molluscan groups include forms as disparate as snails and slugs (class Gastropoda), octopuses and squids (class Cephalopoda), and oysters and mussels (class Bivalvia). The lesser-known molluscs go from the worm-like aplacophorans to the armadillo-like chitons and the fang-shaped tusk shells. Also, molluscs come in all sizes, from species smaller than 1 mm all the way to the largest invertebrate alive, the giant squid that can reach over 15 m and is the origin of the legendary Kraken (Salvador & Tomotani, 2014).
As arcane specialists on Mollusca and eternal inhabitants of museum galleries and catacombs, we are constantly pondering the existence of molluscan life (intelligent or otherwise) on planes other than our own. Thus, we have discussed squid kids, pixel molluscs, and many others. One of us (Carnall, 2018) has even explored cephalopod diversity across the multiverse of Magic: The Gathering (MTG).
Since then, the MTG’s multiverse has witnessed an explosion of molluscan diversity, notably in the cephalopod and gastropod fronts. The kinship of disparate molluscan classes has even been recognised across the multiverse, as seen in the flavour text of Nightwhorl Hermit, which brings bivalves and snails together: “He etches his secrets onto the shimmering shells of mussels, saving them to share with the Great Snail”. To us, that sounded as a call to arms to ̶s̶p̶e̶n̶d̶ ̶m̶o̶n̶e̶y̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶c̶a̶r̶d̶s̶ study all these new life forms.
SLUGS AND SNAILS
Perhaps the largest increase in molluscan diversity in MTG took place among the terrestrial gastropods, with a notable contribution from the Bloomburrow set of 2024. Of all the peoples of the Bloomburrow plane, the ratfolk have achieved the pinnacle of enlightenment, with a culture that revolves around gastropods, including worshipping a being known as The Great Snail. Such advanced sensibilities have only one parallel in our plane’s history: the rise of Lord Helix during the Twitch Plays Pokémon event – though the Cult of the Helix involved a fossil cephalopod (Salvador, 2014).
Snails
The legendary rat warlock Wick, the Whorled Mind grew up in the village of Conch and developed a psychic bond with his companion, the sapient snail Grotgyre – a.k.a. The Great Snail or God-Snail. He found enlightenment with the snails (who doesn’t, right?) and roamed the world spreading the slimy Word and gathering followers (Johnson, 2024), such as the Thought Shucker and Lightshell Duo. Wick is seen with several snails in his card’s art, part of which are similar to some of our plane’s land snails but with a few oddballs that have rather unusual shell shapes. That is perhaps an indication that the snails of the multiverse managed to occupy more of the morphospace available to beings with coiled shells (Raup & Michelson, 1965; Raup, 1966).
It turns out, however, that the Great Snail was actually being controlled by a worm-like parasite. That goes to show that mortals should not put too much trust in a god, as already remarked by our plane’s mythologies. In any event, the worm in question is probably similar to the Leucochloridium flatworms from Eurasia that infect exclusively members of the snail family Succineidae, known as amber snails (Ataev et al., 2016; Nakao et al., 2019). The parasitic flatworm manipulates the snail’s behaviour, making it crawl towards places where it is more conspicuous to predators, namely birds, which are the definitive host of the parasite. Clearly, this Bloomburrow parasite can also infect other types of snails besides amber snails, as seen by the tell-tale bulging and striped tentacles of the Snail creature token (Fig. 1).
Figure 1. Snail creature token and an amber snail (Succinea sp.) from Japan, infected by Leucochloridium paradoxum. Sources: card: Gatherer; photograph: reproduced (cropped) from Nakao et al. 2019.
And speaking of parasites, the Skullcap Snail, from Ixalan, is infested by fungi, like something out of The Last of Us. Even so, we do not have good data on whether this is a parasitic, commensalistic, or mutualistic relationship between the fungus and the snail. In any event, the Skullcap Snail looks more like a slug that rented a skull for a house rather than a proper snail.
The rat spellcaster featured in Mind Spiral is shown with an odd-looking snail shell. That shell is exactly like a fossilised internal mould of a shell – that is, during the fossilisation process, the actual shell sometimes dissolves away, leaving only the mineralised sediment that had filled it up (you can find some examples in Salvador et al., 2018). Finally, let’s just pretend that the chimeric caterpillar-dog-with-ant-like-antennae-and-gastropod-shell known as the Dogsnail Engine doesn’t exist, alright?
Slugs
While the cards above contain all the terrestrial snails we could find around the multiverse, there are plenty of slugs in MTG, contrary to our plane, where snails are much more diverse than slugs. While snails and slugs are perceived as slow creatures, they can be quite active – just ask anyone trying to grow strawberries in their backyard. MTG is thus not free from cultural perceptions, with an Enchantment named Sluggishness. However, only the English language card is offensive; it has more appropriate names in other languages, such as Trägheit in German.
Let us start with the basics. The Slug creature token is overall reminiscent of the members of the Arionidae family found in our home plane. Still, all the teeth positioned around its mouth are completely alien. Actual gastropods have a structure called a ‘radula’ in their mouth, which is like a tongue with dozens of rows of tiny teeth that they use to scrape off their food. Thus, they ingest small morsels of food at a time and are not able to consume an entire skull or creature, as shown in the token’s art. Some marine predatory gastropods, like the cone snails, however, have a radula adapted to hunting fast-moving prey and can ingest entire prey, including fish (Duda et al., 2001).
A similar weird mouth-and-teeth combination can be seen in the Catacomb Slug (from Ravnica), which has way too many tentacles on its head and looks like a cross between a sea hare (a type of marine slug belonging to the family Aplysiidae) and a sea cucumber (part of the echinoderm phylum). Terrestrial slugs (as well as the vast majority of land snails) have only two pairs of tentacles: the topmost pair are eyestalks, with the eyes positioned on their tip; the bottom pair is responsible for the chemical and tactile senses (Chase, 2001).
A good example of the two tentacle pairs is the oldie-but-goodie Giant Slug, from a time when the multiverse had not yet suffered from power creep, and the Rocket-Powered Turbo Slug, arguably one of the greatest cards in MTG. Gluttonous Slug also has two pairs of tentacles, but the second pair is positioned in-between the first one, not to mention it also bears tiny eyes. Weirdly enough, Gluttonous Slug has some leg-like appendages, which give it a rather caterpillar-ish look. The Thermopod, from Dominaria, also look like a cross with a caterpillar because of its three pairs of leg-like appendages and the very arthropod-like mandible. Also, the Molder Slug from Mirrodin has an insect-like or crustacean-like armour plating on its rear end. Still, its armour also bears some passing resemblance to the multiple calcareous plates of chitons, members of the class Polyplacophora and also molluscs.
Slugs typically have their breathing pore (called ‘pneumostome’) on the right side of their bodies, which brings air to their lung. The Spitting Slug from Dominaria, however, has the pneumostome on its left side (Fig. 2). This mirrored anatomy (Schilthuizen & Haase, 2010) indicates that the illustrated slug is a sinistral, or left-handed, specimen – maybe the whole species is made up of sinistral animals! As implied by its name, this slug spits a substance which looks like mucus, which is something no gastropod can do (rather, they produce and secrete mucus through their skin).
Figure 2. Spitting Slug and a banana slug (Ariolimax californicus) from California. Sources: card: Gatherer; photograph: iNaturalist (Neal Kelso, 2025), CC BY 4.0.
Last but not least, we arrive at Toxrill, the Corrosive, the legendary slug horror from Innistrad. Overall, if it were a Pokémon, one could say it evolves from the Morkrut Necropod (also from Innistrad) when it reaches a high enough level. They share a similar body plan, reminiscent of a deflated sea hare that has been taken out of the sea (Fig. 3), have way too many tentacles and a toothed mouth. But, well, we suppose that’s what makes it a slug horror. Curiously, the baby slugs shown around Toxrill have only three pairs of tentacles, implying that extra pairs appear during development. Like all slugs and snails, Toxrill can continuously produce mucus, which is reflected in game terms as slime counters.
Figure 3. Morkrut Necropod and a sea hare (Aplysia vaccaria) from Radès Sea. Sources: card: Gatherer; photograph: Wikimedia Commons (Smailtn, 2024), CC0 1.0.
SEA SNAILS & SEA SLUGS
Terrestrial gastropods make up about one-third of all gastropod species on our home plane. Except for a few hundred freshwater species, it is in the marine environment that the group shows its highest diversity (Rosenberg, 2014). This remarkable marine diversity is reflected in a wide range of forms, ecological strategies, and evolutionary adaptations. In contrast, marine fauna is not that well explored in MTG, particularly considering it is largely restricted to one out of the five mana colours.
There is one sea snail in MTG: Gary, the Snail (from SpongeBob SquarePants). However, Gary is just a different incarnation of the card Toxrill, the Corrosive, which is a terrestrial slug horror.
Sea slugs have not been particularly lucky either, being present only in the comedy set Mystery Booster. The critters in the card Gunk Slug seem to have been inspired by nudibranchs, such as members of the Chromodorididae family (Fig. 4), which are typically colourful animals with stripes that mark their dorsal region – too bad the card is in black and white!
Figure 4. Gunk Slug and a sea slug (Chromodoris willani) from Malaysia. Sources: card: Gatherer; photograph: iNaturalist (Krampf, 2009), CC BY 4.0.
BIVALVES
On our plane, bivalves are the second most diverse group of molluscs by number of species; however, it seems they may not be as common or perhaps as well studied across the multiverse. There’s evidence of bivalve use in commerce and culture. A Seashell Cameo on a scallop makes for a source of mana in a pinch, and the flavour text from Nightwhorl Hermit and Shore Up indicates that mussels are known well enough to be used as votives and have found their way into vernacular expressions.
Giant Oyster resembles the giant clams, Tridacnidae, of our world (Fig. 5) and also occasionally traps hapless animals within their shells as recorded in mythology, museums, medicine (Marina & Popa, 2020) and media (Martin-Pavitt, 2022).
Figure 5. Giant Oyster and small giant clam (Tridacna maxima). Sources: card: Gatherer; photograph: Wikimedia Commons (Dupont, 2009), CC BY-SA 2.0.
However, the most evidence of bivalve life from the multiverse comes from one of the two molluscan humanoid creatures (see Cephalids, below), the enigmatic and seemingly haphazard clamfolk. Clamfolk are anthropoid creatures with scrawny arms and legs with a head that resembles, well, a clam. They are the sworn enemies of the anthropoid lobster-like Homarids (McDermott et al., 1998). Not much is known about them, but a well-known song indicates there is at least one clamfolk settlement and music culture:
The Clams down in Clamville
All scootered and skittled
“The three is no more”
The Clam fiddler fiddled
– Flavour text from Clam-I-Am card.
Clam Session and Clam-I-Am indicate that the clamfolk like good music. However, they do wage war and occasionally end up shelling neutral parties, for which they attempt to make good by issuing Clambassadors with reparations. There’s just one clamfolk legend recorded in the histories of the multiverses, and that is Alexander Clamilton, the clamfolk advisor rebel fond of wordplay and duelling rivals.
CEPHALOPODS
Since the previous review of cephalopods of the multiverse (Carnall, 2018), there has been an explosion of newly discovered cephalopods across the multiverse and one major taxonomic change. In 2018 it was just about possible to construct a decent ‘tribal’ octopus deck with a splash of other cephalopod creatures and spells for flavour (in MTG parlance, tribal decks are decks that benefit from running creatures of the same type and in legacy formats can be bolstered by artifacts like Herald’s Horn, Vanquisher’s Banner and Metallic Mimic). Now it is more than possible to create cephalopod-themed decks for formats like Commander, which restricts the number of copies of cards which can be used and have larger deck sizes.
From the monster-dominated plane of Ikoria comes the Sea-Dasher Octopus with the ability to mutate and merge with other creatures and share their abilities. The wonderfully named bioluminescent Octoprophet is a strictly better Giant Octopus with the same power, toughness and casting cost but with scrying power. From the waters of the Ravnica plane, we have the Mesmerizing Benthid, which creates paralysing illusions upon being summoned. Also from Ravnica, it seems the biomancers of the Simic Combine have been particularly inspired by octopus adaptations in their creations of shark-octopus-lizard Unruly Krasis, or, if you prefer your hybrids with more claws, the shark-octopus-crab Sharktocrab has you covered. Rounding off the hybrid/mutant/fusions are disguise artist octopus-fish Bubble Smuggler and robot-glove-octopus device Acquisition Octopus.
There are a number of new cephalopod creatures of such ability and renown that they are known as legends (legendary creatures in MTG have specific rules). From the plane of Muraganda, one of the three planes that is host to the plane-spanning, death-defying Ghirapur Grand Prix, is the legendary Caelorna, Coral Tyrant, an island-sized octopus that eats leylines for breakfast. Proving that octopuses on some planes are also known for their smarts is the elemental Octavia, Living Thesis, the product of one of Strixhaven University’s finest minds. The latest legend to be discovered is one that spans not only planes but franchises: Ultros, Obnoxious Octopus appears in over twenty games in the Final Fantasy series of video games, as well as Dragon Quest and Kingdom Hearts, and now joins the MTG multiverse thanks to a popular crossover set.
There’s also been an update to the classification, from an arcane taxonomy point of view anyway, so update your codices, spell books and living tomes accordingly. Cephalids, MTG’s humanoid cephalopod race, are now, thanks to a rules change, octopus creatures, which now means they won’t be washed away by Whelming Wave and can be summoned up by Kenessos, Priest of Thassa. Cephalids are generally depicted as cruel, conniving and crafty, as indicated by card names, art and flavour text such as Callous Oppressor, Cephalid Aristocrat, Cephalid Looter, Cephalid Snitch and Cephalid Vandal. Cephalids play an important role in MTG’s ongoing plane-spanning mythology. Aboshan, Cephalid Emperor once ruled the cephalid Mer Empire of the plane Dominaria’s oceans but fell foul of the temptations of legendary MacGuffin, the Mirari, as told in the MTG novel Odyssey (Moore, 2001). Most recently, after a twenty-year absence, cephalids are back in MTG, putting their cunning and conspiring to good use on the mean streets of New Capenna on the plane Capenna. In a city where demon-led crime families vie for dominance, cephalids have found employ as goons for hire (Backstreet Bruiser), spies (Cephalid Facetaker) and information dealers (Psychic Pickpocket), among others.
Rounding off the cephalopod mollusc new discoveries across the planes, and it’s not just octopuses which have seen some love from the designers of MTG. There’s one new nautilus, the conchokleptic Hermitic Nautilus, which wears the shell of the devoured previous owner (that looks vaguely familiar to another MTG cephalopod). There’s tantalising evidence of a fossil record of nautiloids from the plane of Theros, Pull from the Deep, depicts a rather fortuitously preserved fossil (or possible carving) of a nautiloid shell in section, perfectly showing the central siphuncle and nautiloid septa (Fig. 6). There are just two new squid: Skyclave Squid, the multiverse’s first cuttlefish, perhaps; and the rather dapper and dastardly Squidnapper from Mystery Booster, one of MTG’s occasional comedy sets.
Figure 6. Pull from the Deep and sectioned chambered nautilus shell (Nautilus pompilius). Sources: card: Gatherer; photograph: specimen OUMNH-ZC-2022-11, courtesy Oxford University Museum of Natural History, reproduced with permission.
Several other spells and creatures create, summon and otherwise combo with octopuses. Take care at the Astroquarium lest an octopus escape. Octomancers are frog druids who, well, mancy octopuses. You’ll need to study hard for transformation lessons at Strixhaven to polymorph an octopus or frog (or should that be crab?) with Mercurial Transformation. Origami fans might want to practice for Octo Opus the next time the circus is in town. Summon: Leviathan will wash away everything but octopuses, krakens, merfolk, serpents and leviathans and if you spend some time levelling up with rod and tackle and you’ll be fishing up octopuses in no time with a bit of Fisher’s Talent. Lastly, various legends from the multiverse will bolster your suckered and tentacled troops: Kenessos, Priest of Thassa can help you get more octopuses onto the battlefield; planeswalker Kiora has two new aspects Kiora, the Rising Tide and Kiora, Sovereign of the Deep; and Krothos, Lord of the Deep can double your cephalopod forces with every attack.
CONCLUSION
We hope we have covered all the main molluscs from MTG, but feel free to let us know about further instances of mollusc-related stuff and “cameos”. Echoing the ending remarks of Carnall (2018), we see some biological similarities in the molluscs of the multiverse, together with biologically questionable, implausible or outright impossible stuff – all in the name of making a fun game. There are still plenty of molluscs in our home plane to draw inspiration from, particularly the fossil ones, so we look forward to seeing more of them in MTG in the future.
REFERENCES
Ataev, G.L.; Zhukova, A.A.; Tokmakova, A.S.; Prokhorova, E.E. (2016) Multiple infection of amber Succinea putris snails with sporocysts of Leucochloridium spp. (Trematoda). Parasitology Research 115: 3203–3208.
Carnall, M.A. (2018) Cephalopods of the Multiverse. Journal of Geek Studies 5(2): 60–68.
Chase, R. (2001) Sensory organs and the nervous system. In: Barker, G.M. (Eds) The Biology of Terrestrial Molluscs. CABI, Wallingford. Pp. 179–211.
Duda, T.J.; Kohn, A.J.; Palumbi, S.R. (2001) Origins of diverse feeding ecologies within Conus, a genus of venomous marine gastropods. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 73: 391–409.
Marina, V. & Popa, F. (2020) An unusual case of leg wound made by a Sea Shell (Scapharca inaequivalis). International Journal of Surgery Case Reports 67: 127–129.
McDermott, W.; Rosewater, M.; McGough, S. (1998) Hatch your own plot. The Duelist 29: 63.
Moore, V. (2001) Odyssey. WotC, UK.
Nakao, M.; Sasaki, M.; Waki, T.; et al. (2019) Distribution records of three species of Leucochloridium (Trematoda: Leucochloridiidae) in Japan, with comments on their microtaxonomy and ecology. Parasitology International 72: 101936.
Raup, D.M. & Michelson, A. (1965) Theoretical morphology of the coiled shell. Science 147: 1294–1295.
Raup, D.M. (1966) Geometric analysis of shell coiling: general problems. Journal of Paleontology 40: 1178–1190.
Rosenberg, G. (2014) A new critical estimate of named species-level diversity of the recent Mollusca. American Malacological Bulletin 32: 308–322.
Salvador, R.B. & Tomotani, B.M. (2014) The Kraken: when myth encounters science. História, Ciências, Saúde – Manguinhos 21: 971–994.
Salvador, R.B.; Adaci, A.; Benyoucef, M. (2018) Terrestrial Gastropoda from the Pleistocene of Beni Saf, NW Algeria. Annales de Paléontologie 104: 291–300.
Schilthuizen, M. & Haase, M. (2010) Disentangling true shape differences and experimenter bias: are dextral and sinistral snail shells exact mirror images? Journal of Zoology 282: 191–200.
Acknowledgements
We are very grateful to Ilkka H. J. Kivistö for helping to compile the list of slug/snail cards; this venture would have been much more difficult (and probably incomplete!) without his help.
About the authors
Dr Rodrigo B. Salvador is the curator of (non-insect) invertebrates at the Finnish Museum of Natural History, and his research speciality is land and freshwater snails. He played a lot of MTG during his teenage years and early 20s, spending more money on cards than he’d like to acknowledge. He hasn’t played since the Lorwyn block was released, but he keeps a watchful eye on what’s happening in the multiverse while resisting the temptation of buying more cards.
MSc. Natan C. Pedro is a PhD student at the Museum of Zoology of the University of São Paulo (USP), where he focuses on the study of carnivorous marine snails. An MTG player for over 15 years, he found in the game’s multiverse a passion as intense as the one he feels for Biology. Fascinated by diversity, whether in the oceans or on the cards, he has amassed a number of decks that defy any kind of mana control… or available space at home.
Mark Carnall is the collections manager of non-entomological invertebrates and human remains at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History with an inordinate fondness for cephalopods. Mark has spent years trying to build the perfect strictly cephalopod tribal deck and asks that you please wait until turn five because blue creatures are expensive okay but after that you’re in trouble.
A man in a Vienna Beef apron is lecturing into a speakerphone. Somewhere, someone scribbles notes in the margins of a Costco receipt. Elsewhere, a woman slices onions with the precision of a surgeon. A teenager in Chicago buffs his stainless steel hot dog cart until it gleams like a spaceship. A former landscape mogul-turned-cannabis-entrepreneur serves 20 custom hot dogs from a hand-built stand nestled between a ski mountain in Vermont and his dispensary. In Washington State, a Silicon Valley escapee helps his social media manager capture the perfect shot of his stand. A retired math professor counts out buns in Texas. In North Carolina, a man unfurls a 14-foot banner that reads BIG SEXY DAWGS, then opens a folding chair and waits for customers outside a rowdy college bar.
Different zip codes, different lives, but somehow, they all trace the same strange road back to a place called Hot Dog University.
Yes, that’s a real place — tucked into the back of the Vienna Beef factory on Chicago’s North Side. Part classroom, part test kitchen, part pilgrimage for anyone who’s ever dreamed of slinging sausages for a living.
Every graduate of Hot Dog U knows the drill. They've studied the sacred script. They know the snap of the casing is non-negotiable. They've practiced the topping order like it’s a choreography: yellow mustard, neon green relish, chopped onions, tomato wedges, a pickle spear, sport peppers, and just a dash of celery salt.
And they all know the cardinal rule, taught by their P.H.D. (that’s Professor of Hot Dogs): no ketchup. Unless you still ride a tricycle (and can prove it), you're pregnant (we don’t argue with cravings), or it’s your wedding day (and we’d better see the dress).
It’s easy to laugh, until it isn’t.
This is serious business and the students at Hot Dog U are gearing up. Not just for summer, but for something bigger — independence, reinvention, the hope that if they can just get the cart to the right corner, maybe, just maybe, everything might work out.
It’s a little Ted Lasso, a little Abbott Elementary — big-hearted, scrappy, and, unexpectedly, profound. Our story begins in a classroom where the lessons are about hot dogs, sure. But this is also a story about failure and second chances, hustle and hope, and the deeply American belief that a sidewalk, a spatula, and a dream might still be enough.
Hot Dog University official poster. Courtesy of Vienna Beef.
In my family, hot dogs were never just food. They were in-between moments: passed across bleacher seats at ballgames, devoured at gas station stops, slightly charred at backyard cookouts. Hot dogs became shorthand for time spent together.
So when I set out to report this story, it wasn’t because I had a grand theory about encased meats. It was something more subtle: a soft spot for a food that always felt like home. And I didn’t expect to find much more than nostalgia.
But what I found at Hot Dog U wasn’t just a quirky trade school with a great logo. People arrive from burned-out careers and unexpected life turns, from family kitchens and military mess halls, carrying stories as varied as their menus. They leave with a cart, a diploma, and — if it works — a shot at something better.
There’s something quietly radical about that. In a country where “entrepreneur” has become a buzzword for tech bros and hustlers, the students at Hot Dog U are a different breed. They're working-class dreamers. Retired couples. First-generation families. People who don’t want to disrupt the industry. They just want a patch of sidewalk, a roll of napkins, and a line of hungry customers.
The Vienna Beef Headquarters (in Vienna Beef Plaza) on Chicago’s North Side doesn’t exactly scream culinary pilgrimage and it’s not quite what you expect from the birthplace of a thousand sausages.
It’s a squat, brown-brick building with tall, narrow windows. Less Willy Wonka, more municipal records office. But just inside the back door where students are told to enter, a gleaming metal cart and a red-and-yellow Vienna Beef umbrella blooms like a cheerful afterthought, as if to say: yes, you’re in the right place.
Official Vienna Beef cart. Courtesy of Vienna Beef.
You’re told to go through the doors and take the elevator to the second floor to begin your Hot Dog U experience. But don’t worry, if you get turned around, Bill Murphy will come find you. He always does.
Bill is the head of Hot Dog University. He’s your professor of encased meats, your guide through everything from cart etiquette to bulk ordering logistics. Bill makes you feel like you’re the most important person in the room. Like you could sell a thousand hot dogs by sheer charm and will. When you step off the elevator, you’re greeted by Bill and by the start of the Vienna Beef Hall of Fame: posters, trinkets, and sausage-themed memorabilia spanning more than a century. It’s like a hot dog museum married a high school hallway. At some point, it starts to feel a little mythic — like the yellow brick road, if Oz were made of mustard and meat.
Vienna Beef Hall of Fame. Courtesy of Vienna Beef.
At the end, the corridor opens up like a little stage.
You’ve made it. This is where Hot Dog University begins.
It’s early — technically too early for hot dogs — but in a modest kitchen on the second floor of the Vienna Beef Headquarters, a dozen students are gathered around, clutching their Hot Dog U binders. They arrive with merch already in hand: a Vienna Beef cap, a branded pen, and a syllabus, sent by FedEx, like some oddly specific dream school acceptance letter.
There’s coffee and bagels. Some nervous laughter. The kind of hesitant small talk that fills any unfamiliar room on day one.
This is how every Hot Dog University class begins. Everyone is a stranger.
When I attended, the group included a few father-son duos, some couples, a retired truck driver, a seasoned water ice vendor looking to add hot dogs to her cart, and a nine-year-old whose face was already future-brand material. But the exact roster didn’t really matter — the vibe was classic.
People from all over the country. A little nervous. A little unsure. All carrying some quiet, stubborn hope.
They glance around the room with the cautious curiosity of freshmen at orientation, silently trying to figure it out:
Who’s serious? Who’s way out of their depth? Who’s already dreaming of a franchise?
And just before the silence curdles into discomfort, Bill Murphy swoops back in.
Bill is pure Midwestern charm, the dictionary definition of kind — warm, earnest, quick with a pun. On our first Zoom call together, he ended with, “I relished our time together.” I didn’t catch the joke until the screen went dark. I can just imagine him laughing right into the mic.
But Bill isn’t just a warm presence; he’s the real deal, a cornerstone of the Chicago hot-dog world. In 1987, he opened Murphy’s Red Hots near Wrigley Field, a restaurant so iconic that, in the mid-’90s, a group of visiting Japanese executives picked it as the model for an entire chain of franchises overseas. They didn’t just want his recipes — they wanted him. The plan? To make Bill the Colonel Sanders of Japanese hot dogs.
Bill didn’t even have a passport at the time. Never needed one. He was just a guy with mustard on his apron and a shop on the North Side. But the executives were sold — not just on the food, but on Bill’s persona. His “smiling Irish mug.” His realness. And for a brief moment, it looked like his face would beam out from 400 hot dog stands across Japan.
“You think they’re ready for this face?” he joked in an interview at the time. “I don’t think so.”
But whether or not he became an international icon, the truth remains: in a city with more hot dog stands than McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Burger King combined, Murphy’s Red Hots was one of the best. That’s saying something.
And Bill hasn’t changed much since then. He’s still the guy who shows up early, still the one with the extra Vienna Beef hat in case someone forgets theirs, still the guy who — when I mentioned I was throwing a “Wienies & Teenies” birthday party — made sure a shipment of dogs and condiments landed on my doorstep. He’s never set foot in New York City, but when I offered him a hot dog lunch and a ticket to a ballgame, he said he’d find a way to get there. I warned him that my team doesn’t serve Vienna. He just smiled and said he’d make the sacrifice — for the company, not the hot dogs.
He believes in hot dogs, sure.
But more than that — he believes in you.
Bill Murphy teaching at Hot Dog University. Courtesy of Vienna Beef.
Bill Murphy doesn’t wear a lab coat or a chef’s jacket. He wears a Vienna Beef polo and the kind of relaxed confidence of someone who’s seen hundreds of nervous students melt like steamed cheese.
He doesn’t start with grill temps. Or branding tips. Or any kind of textbook business advice.
He starts with a story.
“I opened my first stand in 1987,” he tells the room. “Me and my wife, Letty. We were young and knew nothing about the restaurant business. What we didn’t know and lacked in experience, we made up for in hard work. We were determined to become “top dog in a dog-eat-dog city!”
A few people smile. A few scribble it down like gospel.
“Ignorance is bliss, as they say, and for us it certainly was.”
“They” got it right. People showed up. And then they kept showing up — for 31 years.
He connects with students as he talks, eyes scanning around the oval conference table, Hot Dog U binders spread out in front of them. Most are still waking up, coffee in hand, trying to act like this isn’t their first day at sausage school.
“Back then,” he says, “there was no Hot Dog University. Just the ‘School of Hard Knocks.’ I’m a proud alum.”
It gets a laugh.
“But you — you were smart enough to start here.”
There’s something quiet in the way he says it. Like he means it more than they know.
He tells them about the shop he built, but that’s not why he’s here. He’s here because he knows what this class is really for. Not just culinary training. Not just profit margins or pickle placement.
The real lesson isn’t on paper — it’s in the room itself. The shifting postures. The slow smiles.
At break, the students pour into the hallway. Someone makes a joke about calling their stand Weiner or Later. Someone else starts a group text. A few linger by the Hall of Fame wall.
They came here nervous. Strangers. People with day jobs and second thoughts.
But already, the energy has changed.
They are not just students now. They are — in the quietest, strangest way — beginning again.
Meet The Links
Doug Ingraffia, Hot Dog U Class of 2023. Owner of Western Avenue Dawgs.
Doug Ingraffia behind the counter. Courtesy of Doug Ingraffia.
Doug Ingraffia grew up on the far north side of Chicago, near Devon and Western, just a few blocks from a place he doesn’t yet realize is legendary: Fluky’s, home of the Maxwell Street dog. He stops there on bike rides. Then, at 15, he walks in and asks for a job.
A week later, he’s behind the counter.
By 16, he’s assistant manager. By 17, he’s working the legendary food festival, Taste of Chicago, catering downtown events, learning the craft of the Chicago dog by doing. But life pulls him elsewhere — into the Army, into engineering, eventually into education.
He never stops missing the food.
When he lands in Central Texas, Doug thinks maybe someday, maybe at 60, he’ll open a truck. Just enough to bring the food he loves back into his life.
But teaching wears him down. Colleges stop hiring full-time. High school work pays near minimum wage. Nights are long, classrooms underfunded. One evening, staring down another week of grading and side hustles, Doug makes a decision.
“If I’m going to be poor,” he tells his wife, “I’d rather be poor making hot dogs.”
So he starts researching.
Burner temperatures. Sausage suppliers. Permits. Layouts. And then he stumbles on a website for a place called Hot Dog University. He can’t believe it’s real.
Lincoln Burnell, Hot Dog U Class of 2021. Owner of Lincoln Dogs.
Lincoln Burnell at his cart in Oz Park. Courtesy of Andrea Burnell.
When Lincoln Burrell is stroller-age — not even in school yet — he points out buildings and says, “I work there.” His mom, Andrea, humors him: “Oh yeah? What do you do there?” He always has an answer. “I sell things. I run the place.” The kid is barely tall enough to see out the car window, but he is already pretending to punch the clock.
As he gets older, the play became more elaborate. During the annual neighborhood yard sale — one of those big city block traditions — Lincoln sets up what he calls a “rock museum.” He isn’t even selling anything. He just wants to be part of the scene, chatting with strangers, showing off his finds. But that night, he has notes. “These people need food,” he tells his parents, very seriously. “Next year, we’re doing a full concession stand.”
He starts laying plans: walkie-talkies from his grandparents, zones of operation, a menu. He’s in first grade.
But just before that next yard sale, the family moves. No sale, no concession stand. Andrea tries to soften the blow with a joke: “I think the Department of Child Labor might’ve shown up anyway.”
Lincoln is unfazed. He pivots. He starts designing a lemonade stand. But not the kind that sits outside of a house.
He scouts crowds: Cubs games. Zoo days. Michigan Avenue. Outside Neiman Marcus. The stand pops up like a food truck on kid wheels. And it is all for charity — lemonade for donations to Lurie Children’s Hospital, where he’d once been a patient. He raises nearly $9,000, one paper cup at a time.
That drive — it never goes away.
So when third grade rolls around for Lincoln and the assignment is to pick something — anything — related to the city of Chicago and present on it, Lincoln doesn’t hesitate. He could’ve picked the Bean. He could’ve picked Michael Jordan. Hell, he could’ve picked deep dish. But Lincoln knows the winning strategy. Nothing says Chicago like a hot dog.
It’s 2018. Lincoln is 9 years old. He’s still missing some teeth, still learning to write in cursive. While the other kids are drawing the skyline or cutting out pictures of Wrigley Field, Lincoln is sketching a hot dog bun with arrows pointing to each topping. Yellow mustard. Neon relish. Chopped onion. Tomato. Pickle spear. Two sport peppers. A dash of celery salt. No ketchup. Ever.
Vienna Beef Factory Store & Cafe is just a few blocks from his school. It’s practically a local landmark. One afternoon, his mom, Andrea, signs him out of lunch early, and they drive over unannounced. No call, no appointment. Just flashcards and a plan.
Lincoln is ready. He practices his note cards. Andrea holds up the phone while he stands in front of the Vienna Beef sign and recites his lines for the camera. They’re just going to film the quick school project. But then something unexpected happens. Someone from inside notices. A staff member comes out, asks what they’re doing and instead of brushing them off, invites them inside.
They open the place up to them. Lincoln films in the café. In front of the Vienna Beef Hall of Fame. They let him stand near the chrome counters and the memorabilia wall, like a tiny journalist on assignment. He beams.
This unexpected moment — the kid newscaster stand-up, the flashcards, the genuine excitement — makes its way to the c-suite. The Vice President of Vienna Beef comes downstairs.
And then, according to Andrea, “he practically unloads his whole office.” Baseball caps. Hot dog-themed toys. Even a foam baseball from Wrigley Field. “He is just so excited that Lincoln is taking such an interest,” she says. “And I’m sure he never would’ve guessed this is what it would turn into.”
Lincoln isn’t done. The video might be in the can, but while digging into research for the written part of his project, he stumbles across something that stops him cold: Hot Dog University. He turns to his mom, eyes wide, wheels already turning.
He looks at his mom. “When can I go?”
She laughs. Tells him he can enroll when he is thirteen.
“He was nine at the time,” she remembers. “And to be honest with you, I thought he’d forget.”
Of course, he didn’t.
Astrid and Anton Garrett, Hot Dog U Class of 2022. Owners of Bringing the Chi.
Astrid and Anton in their food truck. Courtesy of Astrid Garrett.
A Powerball ticket, a one-in-millions shot, and suddenly Astrid and Anton are sitting on $2 million. So they do what anyone in Waterloo, Iowa might do in the wake of such surprise: they book a trip to Vegas.
A week of neon lights, slot machines, and one lucky win on the floor later (Anton netted another $10,000), they come home to a quiet kitchen and a legal pad.
Anton starts talking food.
“Vienna,” he says, matter-of-fact, like it’s obvious.
Astrid squints. “Hot dogs?”
“Not just hot dogs. Chicago dogs. Maxwell Street Polishes. Italian beefs. Real stuff. Nobody’s doing it here.”
He’s already sketching ideas in his head. The trailer, the menu, the griddle.
Astrid’s chewing on a different set of numbers: the cost of a food truck, the price of inventory, the hours they’d be working, the space they’d need.
“It’s a lot of money,” she says. “And a lot of time.”
Anton doesn’t flinch. “I used to work at Gold Coast Dogs, back in Chicago. I know the food. People loved our cheddar cheese fries. This stuff sells. Trust me.”
She gives him a look.
“You wanna spend your lottery winnings selling hot dogs out of a trailer?”
Astrid isn’t sold. A food truck sounds like a lot: expensive, consuming, uncertain.
He keeps going. “We do it right, it’ll work.”
So he goes online. Vienna Beef — that’s the brand he swears by. The only kind of dog worth slinging. He’s clicking around the site when he sees a strange little button tucked on the page: Register for Hot Dog U.
He registers.
Anton with his winning Powerball check. Courtesy of Multi-State Lottery Association.
Rich Masi, Hot Dog U Class of 2023. Owner of Big Sexy Dawgs.
Rich Masi selling dogs. Courtesy of Rich Masi.
The North Carolina garage hums with late-night energy — the sweet haze of Juicy J in the air, Queen’s I Want to Break Free blaring from a tinny speaker. It’s after midnight on a Tuesday, two barstools pulled up in Rich’s neighbor’s garage. They both have to work in the morning, but Rich’s calendar is nearly empty with only a couple weeks left on the job.
Somewhere between the beers and the bassline, they start dreaming out loud. First, it’s selling hot dogs out of a vacant key shop in a busy shopping center. Then it morphs. A cart would be better. More freedom. Work when you want. Go where the people are. That night, Rich buys the BigSexyDawgs domain, goes home, and the next day falls down a rabbit hole of hot dog business research.
Rich spent 30 years in data and analytics. Started and sold a couple of consulting firms. Was an executive partner on the IBM Global Team. But the idea that changes his life starts in a garage in Charlotte, with two beers and a wild hair. Rich wants something that’s flexible, low overhead, and face-to-face. Something different. Something fun. And maybe most importantly: something to tell his wife when she asks what he’s doing with retirement.
A few days later, he’s up late again — this time Googling, “how to start a hot dog business.” That’s when he finds Hot Dog University.
He decides to pay for his tuition with his IBM severance retraining benefit and buys the cart with his unemployment checks.
A month later, both plans work out. The cart is real, the name is official, and the late-night garage talk has turned into the start of something.
Joe Cousins, Hot Dog U Class of 2025. Owner of The Original Hot Dog Stand.
Joe Cousins hard at work in his truck. Courtesy of Joe Cousins.
Before Silicon Valley, before the business plans and the franchise ambitions, Joe Cousins was just a teenager on the shores of Lake Michigan, manning a concession stand. “I got taught that business when I was in high school and college,” he says. “And I don’t know, it got into me somehow.”
Even as he climbs the corporate ladder in California, working under senior VPs and navigating the pressure-cooker world of tech, the hot dog idea never leaves. Whenever the job gets frustrating, he pushes a little harder on the side dream: trying to buy a shop in Livermore, California, sketching concepts, even filing trademark paperwork for a potential brand in the Central Valley.
He knows it has to be Vienna Beef. He’s known about Hot Dog U for over 15 years — checking the website often enough to memorize it. But the timing was never right.
Then, he leaves high tech, moves to Central Washington, and decides, “If I’m gonna do this, let’s go.”
Joe enrolls in Hot Dog U, building out a detailed business plan before he sells his first dog. He locks in a permanent location for his big mustard-yellow trailer, hires a professional photographer-slash-social media manager to tell the story, and starts thinking not just about making lunch, but building a brand.
Matt Horn, Hot Dog U Class of 2024. Owner of The Matterhorn Dog House.
Matt and his dog outside of Matterhorn Dog House. Courtesy of Matt Horn.
Matt has a knack for building worlds. For 36 years, he ran the largest garden center in the country — 20 acres of botanical gardens, rare animals, a winery, a fly-fishing shop. His work shaped Rockefeller Center’s holiday displays, the Macy’s Flower Show, and seven of New York Botanical Garden’s major installations. But when shifting times and rising pressures push him out, Matt doesn’t slow down. He pivots.
A Cornell grad who takes education seriously — even when it’s about encased meats — Matt approaches new ventures like a hunter stalking prey: gather intel, study the terrain, learn from the best. So when he stumbles across Hot Dog U, he books a ticket to Chicago. Notebook in hand, he isn’t there to be charmed. He understands the reality: “So many people just buy a cart, chuck their shit in it, and serve it,” he says. That’s not how Matt operates.
This Mustard Be the Place
After that lightbulb moment, whether sparked by burnout, boredom, curiosity, or cosmic luck, each of these Frank-filled dreamers finds their way to Hot Dog University. Not all at once. Not in the same season. But they show up. And what starts as a hunch (or a joke, or a dream) becomes a blueprint. From there, each one carves out their corner of the map. Here’s where we find some of them now.
Lampasas sits about an hour northwest of Austin, nestled in the rolling foothills of Central Texas — the northern gateway to the Hill Country. Founded in the mid-1850s, the town’s location along the Sulphur Creek branch of the Lampasas River made it a popular destination for health seekers seeking wellness benefits from the waters. Today, Lampasas is home to roughly 8,000 people. It’s a tight-knit community grounded in history, nature, and genuine Southern friendliness. Its historic downtown square is anchored by an 1884 courthouse (still in use,) surrounded by limestone storefronts, a sculpture garden, local boutiques, cafés, and a string of colorful murals.
Doug opened his shop as a second act — a return to the food he grew up on, after a long career in education and a lifetime of bumps, bruises, and broken bones. (Thirty-two of them, to be exact.) They are the result of years of racing bikes. But what keeps him showing up, what keeps the lights on and the grill hot, is the community that’s taken shape around the food.
One regular named Dave, a man from the Southside of Chicago, started coming in nearly every day in the early weeks. Doug noticed right away that something wasn’t quite right. He was in pain, moving slowly. They started talking. The man shared that he had cancer, metastasized to his back and lungs. He was headed into surgery and rehab.
Doug doesn’t just serve Dave food. He shares his own story with him too — the years in a wheelchair, the surgeries, the setbacks. “Cancer is probably the only thing I haven’t had,” he tells the man. But the connection sticks. A kind of quiet therapy, from one battered body to another.
Now, even when he’s hurting, the man still pulls up right outside the front door. He uses a walker. Moves carefully. Orders an Italian beef, settles in to watch the game.
This isn’t the kind of place you come just because you’re hungry. There’s a Taco Bell 200 yards from the shop. There’s a Whataburger across the street. Doug has built the kind of spot people look forward to — a place where you’re known, where it’s okay to linger, where the food is good and the company better. And for Doug, that’s the whole point. Not the mustard, or the fries, or the fact that he finally has his own place. It’s this. A regular. A story. A small moment of peace in a booth by the window.
Front register of Western Avenue Dawgs. Courtesy of Doug Ingraffia.
Charlotte, North Carolina, is a city of contrasts. It’s a banking hub turned craft brewery mecca, where glass skyscrapers rise over tree-lined neighborhoods and minor-league baseball games fill the air with the smell of funnel cake. It’s a place of reinvention and ambition, often described as “a small town dressed in a big city’s clothes.”
Nestled in corners around the city, you might spot something unexpected: a stainless steel hot dog cart. Parked outside a retirement community, lurking near the greenway, or holding court in front of a Lowe’s. This is Big Sexy Dawgs, the post-IBM passion project of Rich McDonald — a man who traded data analytics for deli mustard, and never looked back.
The nickname isn’t marketing spin. “I’ve got a bunch of shirts that say Big Sexy,” Rich says. “When I used to run marathons, I’d put it on my shirt. That was a long time ago. Now I’m fat and old. But back then, Big Sexy ran hard.” Today, he runs a different kind of race: the gauntlet of permits, inspections, and location scouting that comes with being a mobile food vendor in Charlotte. Getting the cart built was the easy part. “Getting set up and getting things going is not easy,” he says. “It’s a lot of steps. I’ve got my car, my insurance, my commissary, my health department inspection… now I’m just trying to nail down a location.”
So far, he’s played it guerrilla-style — popping up in parks, asking permission later, and taking gigs that drop into his lap. On Halloween, he worked the neighborhood block party and cranked out 100 hot dogs in an hour. “Like, I’m the coolest kid on the block right now,” he says. “Everybody’s out, everybody’s supportive. Really, they wish they could do it too.”
But Charlotte real estate — even sidewalk space — is political. Rich has been turned down plenty while scouting for a permanent home. For now, he’s keeping Big Sexy Dawgs mobile enough to follow the crowd. Because, whether it’s a race bib or a food-service permit, Rich knows you’ve got to pace yourself if you want to make it to the finish line.
Bringing the Chi’s food truck. Courtesy of Astrid Garrett.
Tucked in Iowa’s northeast corner, Waterloo is a working city — steady, straightforward, and rooted in the rhythm of the Cedar River. It’s the kind of place where people still wave from their porches, where the biggest employer is John Deere, and where Friday night lights draw half the town to the high school stadium. There’s history here — some proud, some complicated — and a sense that people show up for each other, even when it’s hard.
This is where Bringing the Chi parks — in all its glory. You can’t miss the cobalt-blue food truck with a Chicago skyline and Astrid and Anton in matching aprons painted across the back, as well as large, high-resolution food images — close-ups of crinkle-cut fries, a loaded Chicago-style hot dog, a cheeseburger, an Italian beef sandwich blown up along its sides. The name tells you exactly what they’re doing: bringing a taste of Chicago — real Chicago — to a town that doesn’t get a lot of trips through the “garden.” And while the food is what gets people in line, it’s Astrid and Anton who keep them coming back.
Oz Park sits quietly tucked into the city grid, a few blocks from the lake. It’s the kind of Chicago park that doesn’t make many lists but lives at the center of people’s lives. There are little league games on the weekend, tennis courts full by 9 a.m., kids climbing statues of Dorothy and the Tin Man on the playground.
That’s where you’ll find Lincoln Dogs. Set up under a red-and-yellow Vienna Beef umbrella, the small silver cart blends in beside the trees and benches. The logo on the side says it all: Lincoln Dogs, written in swirling yellow script next to a bearded Abraham Lincoln, topped with a towering hot dog in place of his stovepipe hat.
Lincoln started the cart when he was just 14. Now he runs it most weekends with help from his mom, Andrea. They work like clockwork — heating buns, flipping dogs, stacking orders in wax paper boats — and always remember who likes which toppings.
Lincoln serving a hungry customer. Courtesy of Andrea Burnell.
Roslyn sits on the eastern slope of the Cascades, a small Washington town where the mountains press right up against the skyline and the air smells like pine and woodsmoke. Once a bustling coal-mining hub, its downtown is now a row of weathered brick buildings, hand-painted signs, and a saloon that claims to be the oldest continuously operating bar in the state, established in 1889. Tourists trickle in for hiking, fly fishing, and the occasional Northern Exposure fan pilgrimage, but life here runs on its own clock.
It’s here, tucked near a coffee shop and the kind of bar where everyone knows your name, that you’ll find Joe Cousins’ stand. A former Silicon Valley exec who swapped product roadmaps for relish trays, Joe brings a methodical, business-plan precision to the art of the Chicago dog. His neon yellow Vienna-branded stand glows brighter than the sunlight on most days, his apron as crisp as the onions he chops. And while the hot dogs are the draw, Joe also emanates the energy of being the kind of guy who’ll pause to swap fishing reports, explain the proper sport pepper placement, or help his social media manager frame the perfect shot for Instagram.
In Roslyn, the mountains may tower, but the hot dogs stand tall too.
Joe’s hot dog stand in Roslyn, Washington. Courtesy of Joe Cousins.
Wilmington Vermont is a ski town that feels half-asleep in summer and electric in winter, when the slopes of Mount Snow fill with the hum of chairlifts and the thud of ski boots on wooden floors. Route 100 winds right through it, past weathered inns, covered bridges, and general stores stocked with maple candy and flannel shirts.
It’s here that Matt Horn and his family built a thriving cannabis dispensary and wellness hub — “Disneyland for adults,” one writer called it. But his fantasy land wasn’t complete. On a trip to Chicago, he fell for the snap and flavor of a Vienna Beef dog. It stuck with him. He brought his son to Hot Dog University, and together they learned every cut, every topping, every bit of food safety. Then they came home and shoehorned a hand-built hot dog stand between their two dispensary buildings at the base of Mount Snow, a Vermont ski resort.
Outside of Matterhorn Dog House. Courtesy of Matt Horn.
Now, their menu is named after beloved family dogs, their counters are live-edge wood they milled themselves, and their customers linger under ski lifts and outdoor heaters, eating Chicago dogs in the snow.
But it hasn’t all been easy. Matt’s stand is in a historic district and he’s had a long-running cold war with local officials — the kind where you start wondering if the zoning board has a dartboard with your face on it. They tried to nix his vintage Vienna signs, grumbled about his dispensary, and, according to him, generally acted like joy is a code violation. He’s suing them now, which hasn’t exactly warmed relations. Still, his regulars keep showing up — some with letters of thanks, others with stories about how the rest of the town’s “going to hell.” For Matt, that’s reason enough to keep the grill hot and the buns warm. If the town’s going to be suspicious of him anyway, he might as well make it smell like grilled onions.
Happy customers at Matterhorn Dog House. Courtesy of Matt Horn.
The Bun Also Rises
In the weeks leading up to April 8th, 2024, Doug isn’t thinking about his locals. He’s thinking about everyone else. This is the day when they are told they will experience the first total solar eclipse to pass over Central Texas in over a century, and Lampasas — tiny, historic Lampasas — is named one of the top viewing spots in the country. Number four, officially. This is the kind of moment a small business owner dreams of.
A few weeks before the eclipse, the place is already glowing.
The town council is hyping it up. Every hotel sold out. Every camping space is gone. Restaurants print special menus. Local shops stock eclipse glasses like they’re gold. It isn’t just an event — it is the event.
Doug hears the buzz from behind the counter of his red-and-yellow hot dog shop just off the square. “It’s everywhere,” he says. “The city says 45,000 people minimum. Grocery stores, gas stations, restaurants — we’re all supposed to gear up, make sure we are overstocked.”
And Doug listens. He orders more dogs. More buns. More everything. The city even recommends a kind of eclipse etiquette PSA to locals: stock up early, they say. Don’t clog the roads. Barbecue at home. Sit on your porch with a beer and enjoy the spectacle from a lawn chair. Leave downtown to the tourists.
Doug’s regulars listen too. Everyone is in on it — a whole town aligned around the same strange orbit. It feels like preparing for a festival, or the Fourth of July, or a family reunion the size of Texas.
But there’s one familiar face missing from all the chatter.
Dave hasn’t been in for weeks. He used to stop in a few times a week, always upbeat, always joking, even as the walker became a necessity. Doug had his number. He tried texting, then calling. Voicemail. He shrugs it off in the moment, chalks it up to rehab or recovery. But still — he notices.
Inside the shop, things are stationed at the ready. Outside, the front windows have been cleaned until they sparkle. Doug films a video and posts it to Facebook — something cheerful, something charming. Just a guy in a small Texas town with a big-city hot dog shop, getting ready for a once-in-a-lifetime crowd.
The energy is electric. Every conversation circles back to April 8th.
“Where are you watching it from?”
“Did you hear they’re bringing in port-a-potties by the dozens?”
“You think the traffic’s really gonna be that bad?”
Doug doesn’t have time to speculate. He has prep lists to finalize. He has suppliers confirming early deliveries. He has visions of long lines, full tables, people trying a Chicago-style dog for the first time with the sky slowly going dark above them.
It’s the most excitement the town has felt in years.
And for Doug, it feels like a bet worth placing.
The food truck arrives from California, gleaming like a dream, chrome trim winking in the Iowa sun. Astrid and Anton have imagined this moment for weeks. Now it’s real. Now it’s theirs.
Anton climbs inside, flicks on the burners, and —
WHOOSH.
Flames shoot up. Something’s wrong. Way wrong.
“Back up!” Anton shouts, waving smoke out of his face.
Turns out the truck was rigged for natural gas. But they use propane. The grills are misfiring. Flames lick high.
Astrid is panicked. “This is the food truck? This is what we’re doing?”
But there’s no turning back now. The truck is here. The money is spent.
They start fixing what they can — rewiring the fryers, re-sealing lines, figuring out the equipment day by day. But the stress keeps coming. No air conditioning. Food orders that go to waste. Burnt buns.
“There was water floating around the buns,” Bill Murphy would later say, shaking his head. “I mean, it was just too big, too fast, too soon. If they’d called me before they bought the truck, I would’ve told them — don’t do it. But by the time they reached out, it was already done.”
So Bill drives out to see for himself. He’s on his way to Iowa City to pick up his daughter, and decides to stop by. When he steps into the truck, it’s chaos.
“It would’ve made a great episode for a cooking show,” he says. “I walk in and I’m like Chef Ramsay — ‘Shut this kitchen down!’”
But instead of walking away, he rolls up his sleeves.
He shows Anton how to slice the tomatoes properly. How the pickles should be placed. How to keep the buns dry, the flow smoother, the presentation tight.
He sees their grit. Sees how hard they’re trying.
“I was sweating it,” he admits later. “But they’re doing good. They’re learning. They’re working private events, festivals — they’re figuring it out.”
Back in the truck, Astrid wipes her forehead and adjusts a fan near the window.
“Next time,” she says, “we’re getting air conditioning. First thing.”
Trial by fire — literally. But they’re still standing.
Bill Murphy pays a visit to Astrid and Anton. Courtesy of Astrid Garrett.
It’s late afternoon. Lincoln and his mom, Andrea, are packing up for the day. The park nearby is still humming. It’s Sunday and the adult kickball league is finishing up their games at Oz Park.
They’re tired, ready to head home. As they hitch the hot dog cart to the back of their car, they move through the motions, but in the rush, they forget one critical step.
The leg stays down.
A few blocks later, there’s a sudden wrenching sound — metal grinding pavement — then a crash. The cart has popped off the hitch and flipped onto its side, right in the middle of the street.
For a split second, Andrea and Lincoln just stare. Then, almost immediately, two guys from the kickball league — who’d seen it happen — jog over from the park.
“You okay?” one of them calls out.
Within moments, the group rallies around the cart like a pit crew. Lincoln watches in awe as they heave it upright — steady, careful, like they’d done this before.
Miraculously, the damage is minimal. Nothing inside spilled. Nothing broken beyond repair. Still, they know: they got lucky.
On the way home, they stop at Home Depot and buy a wooden leg to replace the busted one.
Because the next day, Lincoln has to serve 300 hot dogs for a school field day.
A week later, two of the same guys stop by the cart.
“Hey,” one of them says. “We’re the ones who helped you flip your cart.”
Andrea laughs. “Oh, then we definitely owe you some free dogs!”
They smile, wave, and disappear into the crowd — another small moment that somehow means everything. Because this isn’t just about food. It’s about how people show up. How a neighborhood wraps its arms around you. How a flipped cart turns into the kind of story you’ll never forget.
It’s April 26th, opening day, and Joe Cousins’ brand-new Vienna Beef food trailer is parked twenty yards from Roslyn’s most famous landmark: the hand-painted “Roslyn’s Cafe” mural from Northern Exposure. Tourists still show up daily to snap photos. Today, a few pause to glance at Joe’s gleaming stainless-steel setup, but he’s too busy to notice — or breathe.
By noon, the grill is cranked so hot it feels like the sun has moved indoors. Joe’s in a Vienna Beef apron, flipping dogs with one hand and passing buns to his teenage crew with the other. Orders are coming in, the farmer’s market is swelling with people, and somewhere in the middle of it all, Joe realizes something: he’s 64, and this business is no joke. By the end of the first weekend, he’s down 15 pounds. His legs ache so badly that if someone had left a wheelchair outside his car, he might have used it.
This isn’t a $3,000 street cart operation. Joe’s trailer, custom-built in Portland and fully wrapped, cost him $82,000. Inside, there’s no wasted space: fryers, grills, griddles, steam tables, food prep stations, sinks — the works. He can cook almost anything in there, but it’s big-bucks equipment that demands big-energy days.
He keeps showing up anyway. Tweaks the workflow. Trains the high schoolers to do more. And he’s already dreaming about a second trailer. Maybe even a brick-and-mortar spot. Franchises. Roslyn still has its photo-op mural, but Joe’s hot dog stand is starting to give it some competition.
A busy day at The Original Hot Dog Stand. Courtesy of Joe Cousins.
It took two months to build Matt Horn’s stand — a hulking, custom hot dog trailer with fresh paint, gleaming stainless steel, and a name ready for the window. But by the time it was finished, Matt realized they’d made one serious mistake: the wheels sat less than half an inch from the frame. Nowhere near enough clearance for the five-hour haul from Turner, Maine, to Wilmington, Vermont.
A new axle and springs would take weeks. He didn’t have weeks. So he hired a low-boy tractor-trailer — the kind used to move bulldozers — and paid $4,000 to get the thing delivered. The move happened October 1. And even then, the dog house wasn’t home free. Wilmington is a tiny, historic town, its streets designed for horse carts, not 10,000-pound hot dog stands. The truck couldn’t make the turns.
So they parked it a mile outside of town, in a park. Matt backed his own pickup onto the low-boy, hooked up the trailer himself, and inched it down the final stretch of road. He pulled into the lot, but he still wasn’t done. They had to bring in a forklift company to get it into position.
It wasn’t until December 21, that the stand finally opened. “What a nightmare,” Matt says, laughing now. “But she’s here.”
Matt Horn tows his new hot dog stand into place. Courtesy of Matt Horn.
Relished Encounters
As you may have guessed by now, the people who’ve passed through Hot Dog University are dreamers, risk-takers, reinventors, and believers. But to understand what keeps them going, what keeps them behind the grills and under the umbrellas and inside the tiny kitchens with fogged-up windows, you have to meet the people who show up on the other side of the counter.
Because it’s not just about the food. It’s not even just about the dream. It’s about the regulars. The weirdos. The guy who comes every Thursday at 2:15 p.m. with exact change. The woman who brings her own mustard. The couple who share a dog and ask you to cut it perfectly in half.
When I asked these sellers about their most loyal customers — the ones who make it worth it — they didn’t always remember their names.
But they always remembered their orders.
“Oh, the woman in the wheelchair? Dragged through the garden, mustard on the side.”
“The guy with the ponytail? Two dogs, no bun, and a root beer. Always a root beer.”
“The one who cried? Chili cheese, extra onions. I’ll never forget it.”
These stories sound too perfect to be real. Too touching. Too weird. Too human. But they are authentic — all of them.
Doug Ingraffia stands behind the counter of Western Avenue Dogs, apron on, soda machine running, and buns stacked to the ceiling. He’s ready.
The streets of Lampasas, Texas, should be overflowing by now for the eclipse. Forty-five thousand visitors were expected. A once-in-a-lifetime crowd.
Doug believed them. Everyone did.
He stocked up. Cleaned the windows. Hired help. Filled the coolers, ordered thousands in extra product. He filmed a cheerful video for Facebook — the little hot dog shop with the big-city flavor, gearing up for the rush.
But noon rolls around and the sidewalks are still empty.
A few regulars come in, almost sheepish. Mostly out of pity. They were told not to leave their homes. And apparently, the tourists got the memo too — or maybe they never came at all. Doug hears that other restaurants are just as bad: full staff, full fridges, and no one walking through the door.
The eclipse arrives, and it’s beautiful. But the town is silent. No crowd. No rush. Just disappointment thick as the Texas heat.
Outside of Western Ave Dawgs. Courtesy of Doug Ingraffia.
Doug keeps glancing at the door, half-expecting to see Dave. But Dave still hasn’t been in for a while. Not since early March. A week later, Doug’s phone rings.
It’s Dave’s wife.
She tells him Dave passed — either the day before or the day of the eclipse, Doug doesn’t remember the specifics, it’s all seeming a little hard to grasp. Dave’s family had just gotten back from Chicago. That’s where they buried him.
Doug hangs up and just stands there, surrounded by food he can’t sell, and silence he didn’t plan for.
By the end of the weekend, he’s staring at nearly $10,000 in losses. Coolers full of dogs, buns, and beef. He gives most of it away before it spoils. Calls suppliers. Tries to make arrangements. That night, alone in the shop he built from scratch, he says the thing he’s been holding back:
“This might break me.”
But the vendors work with him. He sets up payment plans. The lights stay on. And somehow, the regulars start trickling back in. Not in droves, but enough. Enough to keep the place alive.
Doug’s been through harder things than a bad weekend. And the dream — the real one — didn’t start with an eclipse. It started with a counter. A window. A few chairs. A guy from Chicago, trying to build a place where people feel at home.
The sun is bright over Waterloo as cars pull up to 1625 W. 4th St., where Bringing The Chi has put their grill tongs down for the day. It’s the first Tuesday in August and so they’ve turned their storefront into something else entirely: a staging ground for backpacks.
From 11 in the morning until 7 at night, families drift in. A mom with three kids in tow. A grandfather holding the hand of his shy grandson. A boy who can’t decide between dinosaurs and superheroes.
The rules are simple: one backpack per household, children ages 4 to 8, and every child must come with an adult. But the moments are anything but simple. Kids sling the straps over their shoulders and instantly stand taller, as if the weight makes them older, braver. Parents murmur thank you in a dozen different ways.
By the end of the day, the supply is running thin, but the shop is buzzing like a late-night rush — because when Atrid and Anton give something away, it never feels like charity. It feels like community.
It was supposed to be simple — a hot dog party at his mother-in-law’s assisted living facility. A nice gesture. A little give-back. Rich rolls in a little before 11 a.m., cart gleaming, Vienna dogs ready, imagining a slow, neighborly lunch service.
By 11:05 a.m., the line is 30 deep. Cardigans, walkers, electric scooters. And the crowd wants their dogs. Rich is sweating over the steam table like he is back in a New York marathon, except now he’s sprinting against the clock, not the other runners.
"It's the busiest I’ve ever been,” he says. “And the messiest.” Buns topple, toppings spill, the prep table looked like a mustard crime scene. Still, the residents kept coming, grinning as they clutch their paper boats like winning bingo cards. By the end, Rich has fed what feels like the whole building — and maybe half their visiting relatives — in the kind of organized chaos that leaves you both wrecked and wired.
“They take great care of my mother-in-law,” he says. “And that day, I got to return the favor.”
Plus, it’s not every day you get to be the hottest ticket in an assisted living facility.
It’s late afternoon at the cart, and it’s the kind of day where the lunch rush has died down and the grill sizzles lazily. A man strolls up with a kid no taller than the counter. The kid’s got that serious look — the one that says this is important business.
Matt leans over. “What’ll it be, buddy?”
Without missing a beat, the boy rattles off his order: “Hot dog. Tomatoes. Onions.”
Matt blinks. The dad shrugs, smiling. The kid nods like he’s negotiating a business deal.
No ketchup. No mustard. Tomatoes and onions — a combo Matt has never heard from someone who still needs a booster seat.
A few minutes later, the kid takes a bite, chews thoughtfully, and looks up. “Man,” he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, “that was the best hot dog I ever had.”
Matt watches him walk away, shaking his head. It’s not every day you meet a 5-year-old with the palate of a Chicago street vendor.
Matterhorn Dog House kitchen. Courtesy of Matt Horn.
It’s a slow afternoon at Lincoln’s Dogs, the kind of sleepy park day where the sun warms the benches and the music floats more than it plays. The “Lincoln Dogs Playlist” is rolling — a hodgepodge of summer songs and recent obsessions, the current favorite being a dreamy track from a little-known Texas band called the Beatnik Bandits.
Most locals don’t recognize it. In fact, Lincoln and his friends half-expect people to wander up and ask why they’re listening to something so far off the Top 40 map. But then it happens: an elderly couple, easily in their eighties, shuffles up to the cart with eyes bright like they’ve just stumbled into a secret.
“We take a new adventure through music every week,” the woman says. “This week, it’s the Beatnik Bandits. How do you kids know them?”
Lincoln nearly drops the tongs. The odds of someone in this zip code knowing that band are about as slim as finding a sport pepper on a New York ballpark dog.
“They were the coolest people we’ve ever met,” Andrea later says, still shaking her head. “You turn on Beatnik Bandits, and you’re like, ‘what on earth are these 80-year-olds doing listening to this?’ ”
The moment sticks. It’s why the playlist keeps shifting, always weaving in something new, something unexpected — just in case the next passerby is carrying a musical adventure of their own. And so the cart stays stocked not just with Vienna beef, mustard, and relish, but with a rotating soundtrack.
Joe Cousin’s Hall of Fame (or Shame) Orders:
Some customers just want ketchup and mustard. Others go down in history. There was the guy who asked for cream cheese and mayo (together, on purpose). The foot-long buried under every topping in the cart? That was the first hot dog ever for an adventurous newcomer from overseas. And then there was the Chicago transplant who demanded his Italian beef so wet he could “drink it.” Joe serves them all, no judgment. But maybe a little side-eye?
While Dave might be gone, for Doug, he’ll always be a customer. And he’ll always remember his order — an Italian beef, baptized with hot and sweet peppers, sometimes mozzarella, but not always. He and his wife Maria came in so often Doug didn’t need to ask what they wanted. Then one day, Dave showed up with a stack of framed White Sox memorabilia from his garage. Maria didn’t want it in the house, and Doug, a dyed-in-the-wool Cubs fan, told him, “Dude, you know I hate the Sox, but I’ll do it for you.”
Now those five frames hang in Doug’s restaurant, untouched since Dave died. And they’re no longer just decorations — they’re a kind of memorial. Doug jokes with customers who point them out, “Nah, I’m not a Sox fan. I had a customer who was. He’s gone now, so the pictures stay on the wall.”
It’s the kind of thing that makes people pause before taking their first bite. Because this place is about the people who walk in hungry and sometimes leave something behind.
Dave’s memorabilia wall. Courtesy of Doug Ingraffia.
Full Steam Ahead
It’s another hot Chicago summer, so you can be sure you’ll find Bill Murphy prepping for a new class of sausage slingers — and stuffing FedEx mailers full of Hot Dog University materials to send their way. “There’s real stakes here,” he says. “It’s a hard day. A hard life. A long grind. You go to work, you work all day, and you bring home the paycheck to the family, and you're lucky if you get a new pair of socks out of the deal. But the chance to go out for a good hot dog in the middle of a workday? How do you beat that?”
Doug has a map behind his counter with seventy pins — each one marking a place where someone came from just to eat his food. Some are Chicago transplants. Others are tourists. They come from far and wide.
Astrid and Anton had big winter plans for the truck — head south, chase the sun, sling dogs where the sidewalks never freeze. Maybe Houston. Maybe Miami. Somewhere with traffic and tans. But it didn’t happen. Too many logistics, too much money, and too many people back home depending on them.
Astrid’s not the type to cut loose her crew. Before the lottery win, she worked the aisles at Home Depot. When her old co-worker Carol got canned, Astrid didn’t hesitate — she hired her to sling dogs instead.
For most of the year, Rich’s cart has been parked — locked away in a storage unit while he’s focused on selling the house in Charlotte and getting ready for a new chapter. Not a full retirement, exactly. More like a pit stop.
This month, he and his wife are moving to Bolton Beach — a sliver of sand between Wilmington and Myrtle Beach with fewer than a thousand full-time residents. The kind of place where summer brings a tidal wave of renters, but winter feels like a neighborhood potluck.
There’s one particular parking lot — the main gateway to the beach — where everyone comes through, but food options are scarce. A few trucks drift in and out, but no one sets up shop there regularly. Rich thinks it could be his spot.
First, though, he’ll need to get through the red tape in a new county: find a commissary, pass inspections, stake his claim. He’s eyeing the fall to roll the cart back out, grill sizzling, ready for that steady churn of beachgoers.
Until then, the cart waits. Not retired, just resting. Like its owner, it’s got more hot dogs left in it.
On Sundays, you’ll find Joe in the middle of a blur — the farmers market packed shoulder-to-shoulder, music from the bandstand mixing with the smell of onions sizzling on his flat-top. Thousands of people pass through, and for Joe, it’s both chaos and calibration. This is where the systems get tested — the speed, the flow, the teamwork — because in the hot dog business, no one wants to wait. Over the summer, he’s tightened every process, solved the bottlenecks, and now his crew of high schoolers — all friends from the same sports teams — move like they’re running plays they’ve practiced all season.
Every once in a while, when the line slows, Joe will lean forward at the counter and explain what’s in someone’s hand. Not just a hot dog, but the Harmony of Flavors — the Chicago dog’s seven-piece orchestra: the snap of the Vienna beef, the tang of mustard, the neon relish, the crunch of sport peppers, onions, tomatoes, a pickle spear, all on a poppy seed bun. Together they create something more than the sum of their parts, something most customers have never tasted before.
It’s a lesson, a performance, and a service all in one. And Joe gets to teach it every weekend.
And then there’s Matt Horn, who’s got something unexpected on his calendar this summer. The Vulgar Chef is coming.
The online sensation has nearly half a million followers on Instagram, a reputation for touring hot dog joints across the country, and a knack for saying exactly what he thinks, straight into the camera.
Lincoln’s business is growing too. He’s working on merch. Talking about expansion. Still doing homework in the midst of it all. When I started reporting this, his parents — Andrea and Josh — ran the operation together: permits, logistics, backup buns. It was a family business in the most literal sense.
But life changed. Josh is no longer part of the family. And now, Andrea and Lincoln are starting over — rebuilding the business, and the family, at the same time.
Still, every weekend they show up. Still, they steam the dogs. Still, they balance invoices and algebra homework, gas tanks and grief. What hasn’t changed is the truth: Linc might be the face of Lincoln Dogs, but behind the brand is someone who believes in him — and keeps showing up.
And that’s the thread.
It runs through all of them.
And Bill — Bill is not a father to them all, but somehow, he is family. He is the voice in the room that says: You’re not crazy. That this thing they’re doing, this act of showing up — it matters.
“It's a thread that ends up being woven through the fabric of each of our lives,” Bill tells me. “Chicago has almost 2000 hot dog stands. And you could ask people on the street who's the best hot dog in town? And you'll probably get 200 different ones. But that's because it's more than just the taste of the hot dog. It's the experience. Who took you to the hot dog stand that you go to? Is it your grandpa, your dad, your uncle, your mom, your brother, your sister? Whose car did you sit on the bumper of while eating those hot dogs?"
Even Vienna Beef — the company behind the brand — is still family-run. In a world where most multimillion-dollar companies answer to shareholders, they answer to tradition. To flavor. To people. They believe in carts. In sidewalks. In small bets placed with big hearts.
When I finally get the chance to attend Hot Dog University myself — as a journalist, but also as something closer to a pilgrim — something unexpected happens.
The day before class begins, a few of them come to meet me.
Graduates and newcomers. Andrea and Linc. Students from my class. They say, “You’ve got to try one,” and we meet at a Chicago Hot Dog stand like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Like this is how you welcome someone into the fold: a little steam, a little mustard, a moment of quiet at a picnic table.
And it’s in that moment — not in the class, not in the research, not in the interviews — that I finally get it.
This isn’t just a business. It’s a network of belief.
Belief in hot dogs, yes. But also belief in second chances. In daily dignity. In one another.
And something else happens that day, too.
There’s a new kid in our class. Nine years old. His name is Derek. He’s starting Derek’s Dogs with his dad. He’s wearing a Vienna Beef t-shirt that almost reaches his knees. He’s small, but he’s here — and he’s serious.
After lunch, as we pack up, Lincoln walks over.
He’s taller now. More comfortable in his own skin. You can see the shift: he’s no longer the youngest — he’s a veteran.
He leans down and gives Derek a piece of advice.
“Use that face well,” he says, half-grinning. “You won’t be that cute forever.”
Everyone laughs. Derek beams. Andrea shakes her head. But in that moment — a moment as brief and unexpected as the first bite of a really good hot dog — a torch is passed.
Bill, Lincoln, and Derek pose for a photo. Courtesy of Celia Aniskovich.
There’s a reason it works. It’s not just the price point or portability or that perfectly calibrated snap.
It’s because of who’s behind the cart.
A hot dog is just a sandwich. But in the right hands, in the right moment, it can become a plan. A future. A second chance.
And if you ask the people who sell them, they’ll tell you the truth: the work is hard. The stakes are real. The cart is heavy.
But damn — when it’s clicking, when the dog has snap, the customer smiles, and the mustard’s in the right place — it feels like everything might still be possible.
At some point during my reporting — maybe in a hallway between sessions, or over a shared tray of fries — I scribbled in my notebook a line I’d heard one of the students proclaim, “This is the last place the American dream is alive and well.” I don’t remember who said it. And maybe that’s fitting. Because it could have been any of them.
The American dream — the real one, the one about second chances and self-made beginnings — feels harder to find these days. But at Hot Dog U, for a few hundred bucks and a couple of days of class, you can become a business owner. A boss. A sausage-slinging CEO with a cart and a corner and a plan. Hot Dog University, for all its novelty, may just be one of the last places in America where hard work and a little charm might still be enough to change your life.
I can’t think of another place like it.
So yes — this is a story about hot dogs. But really, it’s a story about people: fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, friends and strangers.
It’s a story about all of us.
Bill with his students, proud grads of Hot Dog U. Courtesy of Vienna Beef.
It’s been over a year since I attended Hot Dog U, but it’s summer now — and that means one thing, no matter where you are: there are hot dogs to be sold, grilled, and devoured. Somewhere near you, I promise, there’s a Hot Dog U grad slinging the real deal. So do yourself a favor: go find a proper Chicago dog. You won’t regret it.
Switchboard researcher Lilly Bartilucci contributed to this story.
Celia is a New York based documentary filmmaker and the owner of Dial Tone Films. The only thing she loves more than a good story is the New York Mets (who rarely provide a good story).
“The world’s biggest frogs build their own ponds” is art as a headline because it sounds like an adage your grandfather would tell while fishing one afternoon, but also oops the adage has now been corrupted by grind culture tech bros.
Here’s a neat coin puzzle I received by email from my reader s_hskz2 (at twitter.com).
Puzzle. You have 9 coins: 3 gold coins, 3 silver coins, and 3 bronze coins. Within each metal, the coins are indistinguishable. Exactly one gold, one silver, and one bronze coin are counterfeit; the other six are genuine. You are provided with a magic bag that functions as follows: when you place a subset of coins into the bag and cast a spell, the bag glows if and only if the subset contains all three counterfeit coins. Can you identify all three counterfeit coins using at most 5 tests?
I tried to find an easy solution and didn’t. Then I decided to use information theory to guide me to an answer. Unsurprisingly, it worked. The solution wasn’t trivial, but it was a lovely practice in using information theory for such puzzles.
Later, s_hskz2 sent me a more difficult version: There are 10 coins of each kind, and you are allowed to test 10 times, but I was too lazy to try.
An app developer has jailbroken Echelon exercise bikes to restore functionality that the company put behind a paywall last month, but copyright laws prevent him from being allowed to legally release it.
Last month, Peloton competitor Echelon pushed a firmware update to its exercise equipment that forces its machines to connect to the company’s servers in order to work properly. Echelon was popular in part because it was possible to connect Echelon bikes, treadmills, and rowing machines to free or cheap third-party apps and collect information like pedaling power, distance traveled, and other basic functionality that one might want from a piece of exercise equipment. With the new firmware update, the machines work only with constant internet access and getting anything beyond extremely basic functionality requires an Echelon subscription, which can cost hundreds of dollars a year.
In the immediate aftermath of this decision, right to repair advocate and popular YouTuber Louis Rossmann announced a $20,000 bounty through his new organization, the Fulu Foundation, to anyone who was able to jailbreak and unlock Echelon equipment: “I’m tired of this shit,” Rossmann said in a video announcing the bounty. “Fulu Foundation is going to offer a bounty of $20,000 to the first person who repairs this issue. And I call this a repair because I believe that the firmware update that they pushed out breaks your bike.”
App engineer Ricky Witherspoon, who makes an app called SyncSpin that used to work with Echelon bikes, told 404 Media that he successfully restored offline functionality to Echelon equipment and won the Fulu Foundation bounty. But he and the foundation said that he cannot open source or release it because doing so would run afoul of Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the wide-ranging copyright law that in part governs reverse engineering. There are various exemptions to Section 1201, but most of them allow for jailbreaks like the one Witherspoon developed to only be used for personal use.
“It’s like picking a lock, and it’s a lock that I own in my own house. I bought this bike, it was unlocked when I bought it, why can’t I distribute this to people who don’t have the technical expertise I do?” Witherspoon told 404 Media. “It would be one thing if they sold the bike with this limitation up front, but that’s not the case. They reached into my house and forced this update on me without users knowing. It’s just really unfortunate.”
Kevin O’Reilly, who works with Rossmann on the Fulu Foundation and is a longtime right to repair advocate, told 404 Media that the foundation has paid out Witherspoon’s bounty.
“A lot of people chose Echelon’s ecosystem because they didn’t want to be locked into using Echelon’s app. There was this third-party ecosystem. That was their draw to the bike in the first place,” O’Reilly said. “But now, if the manufacturer can come in and push a firmware update that requires you to pay for subscription features that you used to have on a device you bought in the first place, well, you don’t really own it.”
“I think this is part of the broader trend of enshittification, right?,” O’Reilly added. “Consumers are feeling this across the board, whether it’s devices we bought or apps we use—it’s clear that what we thought we were getting is not continuing to be provided to us.”
Witherspoon says that, basically, Echelon added an authentication layer to its products, where the piece of exercise equipment checks to make sure that it is online and connected to Echelon’s servers before it begins to send information from the equipment to an app over Bluetooth. “There’s this precondition where the bike offers an authentication challenge before it will stream those values. It is like a true digital lock,” he said. “Once you give the bike the key, it works like it used to. I had to insert this [authentication layer] into the code of my app, and now it works.”
Witherspoon has now essentially restored functionality that he used to have to his own bike, which he said he bought in the first place because of its ability to work offline and its ability to connect to third-party apps. But others will only be able to do it if they design similar software, or if they never update the bike’s firmware. Witherspoon said that he made the old version of his SyncSpin app free and has plastered it with a warning urging people to not open the official Echelon app, because it will update the firmware on their equipment and will break functionality. Roberto Viola, the developer of a popular third-party exercise app called QZ, wrote extensively about how Echelon has broken his popular app: “Without warning, Echelon pushed a firmware update. It didn’t just upgrade features—it locked down the entire device. From now on, bikes, treadmills, and rowers must connect to Echelon’s servers just to boot,” he wrote. “No internet? No workout. Even basic offline usage is impossible. If Echelon ever shuts down its servers (it happens!), your expensive bike becomes just metal. If you care about device freedom, offline workouts, or open compatibility: Avoid all firmware updates. Disable automatic updates. Stay alert.”
Witherspoon told me that he is willing to talk to other developers about how he did this, but that he is not willing to release the jailbreak on his own: “I don’t feel like going down a legal rabbit hole, so for now it’s just about spreading awareness that this is possible, and that there’s another example of egregious behavior from a company like this […] if one day releasing this was made legal, I would absolutely open source this. I can legally talk about how I did this to a certain degree, and if someone else wants to do this, they can open source it if they want to.”
Echelon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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