Despite its impending closing, Swankie Frankie rewards a design-your-own-hot-dog contest winner.
By Grace Pateras
Mac and cheese, meat chili, onions, sauerkraut, and crushed potato chips all sit on top of a hot dog inside a poppy-seed bun.
This combination of flavors was designed by University of Iowa junior Jenna Lee and won a contest rewarding her with a free hot dog a week for a semester at Swankie Frankie, 125 S. Dubuque St.
“A free hotdog a week? That’s sick,” Lee said. “Quite the prize, huh?”
The contest was put on by a group of students, led by Colin Brown, in a mass-communication course at the UI. Ten students worked throughout the semester to revamp the hot-dog shop’s social-media accounts to get more engagement.
“We started working with [Swankie Frankie] and just went from there,” Brown said. “Everybody had a certain role, and it was a great learning experience and was a lot of fun.”
Last month, the promotion was on the Swankie Frankie Facebook site, which asked users to pick from a variety of toppings and create their own dog.
Class group members and Swankie Frankie owner Clyde Guillaume narrowed the submissions to the top three hot-dog creations. Then a Facebook poll was made for users to vote on their favorites.
Lee’s hot dog was on the list, and she asked friends and family to share the page with their friends to get more votes. She was up against her sorority sister’s hot-dog creation.
Voters had four days to pick their favorites and were also able to order the finalists’ dogs at the store at a discounted price to test them out.
Lee won with 257 Facebook poll votes.
“I didn’t really feel bad winning [against my friend],” she said. “We both really wanted to win because we both love hot dogs, but it’s not like we were trash-talking each other or anything.”
Hot dogs, Lee said, along with Chinese food and pasta, are her favorite foods.
Unfortunately for Lee, Swankie Frankie will leave its space on the Pedestrian Mall at the end of the semester, and it hasn’t found a new location yet.
Guillaume said he would like somewhere outside downtown, possibly somewhere with a drive-through.
That doesn’t change Lee’s reward, though.
Once the new location is open, her dog will be featured on the menu called “All of Me,” which Guillaume named.
Guillaume and Brown are working on ideas to award Lee for her idea, and they will find a solution for getting her that weekly free hot dog.
“We’ve been figuring out how everything’s going to work out,” Brown said. “We were thinking of doing a punch card if [the shop] stayed downtown; otherwise, we’re thinking of giving her other recognition for what she did. She did a great job, and obviously, she had the winning dog.”
In regard to the class project, Guillaume said, it was successful.
“I didn’t see a rise in [the number of] customers from the contest, but we got more followers and interaction on social media, which was part of the goal,” he said.