Anthropology senior Andrew Jasmer cuts up a green pepper June 12, 2013 at What Up Dawg?, 317 M.A.C Avenue. The restaurant offers a wide variety of hot dogs, including coney dogs. Weston Brooks/The State News
—The specialty hot dog shop and bar, What Up Dawg?, 317 M.A.C. Ave., is in talks with a downtown Lansing bar complex to open a new location, a co-owner confirmed.
“We think it’s a great idea,” Seth Tompkins, co-owner of What Up Dawg?, said. “Downtown Lansing has been really good to us.”
An undisclosed bar complex owner saw What Up Dawg?’s Lansing hot dog cart and sparked the idea to open a location within his bar, Tompkins said.
It’s all “hopes and dreams,” as all four of What Up Dawg?’s co-owners currently are weighing the costs and benefits before reaching a consensus required for the decision, Tompkins said.
“It takes a lot of hot dogs to sell to make $4,000 to $5,000 dollars,” Tompkins joked.
The Lansing location would be a small storefront in a bar area featuring a limited menu and kitchen, and would sell alcohol under a concession license, Tompkins said. The new location would be open in conjunction with the bar and for certain events, he added.
Jared Lawton, another co-owner of the restaurant, said the decision is a natural one for the business.
“Business-wise it’s a great idea for us,” Lawton said. “It gets our name and product out there.”
Another location means more income during the summer, which was the same reason What Up Dawg? created the Lansing and summer festival food carts, Tompkins said.
“You have a business in East Lansing and see a tremendous drop, whereas you don’t in Lansing,” Tompkins said. “Not to say East Lansing doesn’t hop when the students are around, but it’s a desert in the summertime.”
There also would be a serving cart outside in addition to the indoor hot dog shop, Andrew Jasmer, worker at What Up Dawg?, said.
“They’ve got a patio and you can see the stadium all lit up,” Jasmer said. “It’s an indoor (and) outdoor experience.”
Jasmer said the allure of What Up Dawg? includes several factors that make it stand out from the downtown East Lansing pack, from strange-but-tasty hot dog concoctions to a personal atmosphere.
“If we’ve seen you before we tend to recognize you,” Jasmer said. “It’s a more personable than the other bars where you get served and shoved away.”
Tompkins said he wants to develop a long-standing restaurant similar to his favorite local bar, Crunchy’s, because of all the memories he created there through the many burgers and beers.
“My goal is sustainability,” Tompkins said. “I want my place to be around long enough for people to come back and say ‘I want What Up Dawg?’”
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