Accidental Success: A Hot Dog that Tastes Like Steak
As you fire up the grills this 4th of July weekend, a hot dog or two might find it onto your plate. But will that hot dog taste like a steak?
Patrick Montgomery is in the business of delivering customers the best steaks they'll ever eat. Along the way, he may have just created the best hot dog anyone has ever tasted as well. The story of what happened when a steak company’s hot dog sales went through the roof is featured in the American Countryside clips below.
In 2016, Patrick Montgomery began raising wagyu cattle and founded the KC Cattle Company, based on Weston, Mo. He began developing markets for his prime steaks. But of course, those animals produce more than just steak.
The logical first step was high-end hamburgers. But he didn’t want anything to go to waste, continually looking for another use for the beef trimmings.
There are more trimmings than steak, which often has turned into hamburger.
“Hot dogs were one of them, and it was actually one of our worst sellers when we launched it,” Montgomery says. “So, I thought it was a pretty big dud.”
But nonetheless they sent the hot dogs to publications that might review the premium franks and perhaps provide a sales boost. One random Thursday in 2019, after fixing fence, Montgomery suddenly began receiving text alerts on his phone about orders. Once had was back home and refreshed his website, nearly half a million people were on his site.
Food and Wine Magazine had made quite a proclamation about the KC Cattle Company’s hot dogs: It was basically like eating a steak in a bun, or an elevated “tube steak,” if you will. The flavor had real depth and smoky undertones, and the texture and color (darker, more brown than red) was different than most hot dogs—in a good way.
“They proclaimed we had the best hot dog in the world,” Montgomery recalls. “Death by growth was the forefront of my mind because we had 1.5 of us working here at the time.”
Hot dog sales went through the roof, the only problem was they had almost no hot dogs to sell at the time.
“We had 30 packs of hot dogs in stock when this happened, so we had to figure out how to get 10,000 lb. of trim and all of our steaks were back ordered and everything else,” he says. “So, it was definitely a stressful couple of months after it happened.”
Montgomery was honest with his customers, updating them almost once a day. He offered to let them cancel their orders or wait a week or more for the hot dogs. The customers appreciated the honesty and recognized the success ahead for the KC Cattle Company.
Today the company is better able to meet the demand for those hot dog orders and the steaks, as well. Montgomery says those hot dogs and brats do continue to garner quite a bit of attention.
“The hot dog is 100% wagyu,” he says. “For our brats, we mix in some bacon ends to make it a little more forgivable if you throw them on the grill. They are delicious; I mean, you can't go wrong with bacon, wagyu beef and cheese.”
Montgomery raises his wagyu herd just north of Kansas City, in the hills near the Missouri River. He hopes he can continue to supply folks with great steaks, hot dogs and much more as he grows his business.
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