WEENIE POWER

Are they actually making a profit on the $1 hot dogs at Blue Jays games? An investigation into food pricing and stadium finance reveals a promotion that's even smarter than it looks

- JAKE EDMISTON

The doors open at 5:30 p.m. and the hot dog sales start immediately. By 6 p.m. the stadium has sold 4,235.

The meat usually arrives at the Rogers Centre a few days before Loonie Dogs Night, delivered to a warehouse on the ground level behind right field. On game day, the wieners move up to a massive, central kitchen hidden on the so-called mezzanine level — a floor, totally off-limits to fans, tucked somewhere between the field and the 100 level.

The kitchen has about 50 cooks on Tuesdays, and they start steaming hot dogs before the doors open. After that, they’re loaded into hot boxes and wheeled across the stadium to one of the 38 concession stands selling $1 hot dogs.

Each concession stand is responsible for putting the wieners into buns and wrapping them in foil. Staff behind the counter look like they can do dozens in a minute, with a kind of monastic calm, twisting and folding and stacking the hot dogs into a pile that is almost always getting smaller, like trying to fill a bathtub without a plug.

By the first pitch, sales were up to 25,542 hot dogs.

The Loonie Dogs Night promotion, every Tuesday the Jays are in town, has transformed a typically slow night into one of the busiest, most anticipated days at the ballpark, selling more than a million hot dogs over the past three years.

At the same time, the promotion has puzzled hot dog vendors outside the stadium, as well as food industry bigwigs.

The price is just too low. They all have theories. Something has to be going on, they say, some quiet handshake deal, some scheme, some loophole to allow them to sell a hot dog for a dollar, especially after years of high inflation have made almost everything more expensive. The fear, for some in the hot dog business, is this runaway promotion will distort the public perception of how much a hot dog really costs.

But will it? Or is it truly possible to make a profit on a $1 hot dog?