With the sun sitting high over Plant City on a hot summer afternoon, Alan’s Air Conditioning brought the competition as they kicked off the 4th of July weekend with their first annual Hot Dog Eating Contest.
“We just brought Alli Perkins on as our new marketing director and we were looking for some things to do to obviously get our brand out there but also do some things with the community and get to know some other businesses,” Alan’s AC owner Brian Lewis said. “She came to me with the idea, and we’re all foodies around here, so I figured let’s do it here, let’s host one. We reached out to local businesses – some of them were clients of ours, some of them were vendors of ours but some were just people from around the community that wanted to be a part of the contest.”
At noon, all seven competitors took their seats at the table on stage as pans filled with 10 hot dogs were placed before them and pitchers of water were filled to help the participants down those dogs quicker. A few minutes later the clock began ticking and each competitor raced to see who could devour the most before their 10 minute time limit elapsed. With a variety of strategies and levels of urgency deployed – whether competitors dipped their buns in water or ate their hot dogs and buns separately, whether they took a “slow and steady” approach or jumped out of the gate firing on all cylinders – the race was on.
Through the first few minutes everything seemed calm, without much struggling to speak of from the eaters. But as the field crossed over into the back half of their 10 minute time limit, the pressure mounting from the sheer volume of hot dogs consumed became evident. The brows became furrowed, the sweat on their foreheads and strain on their faces was clear.
As the final second expired, officials began walking down the table to assess the damage, note each competitor’s number of hot dogs and crown a winner. And despite valiant efforts from all seven competitors, only one man could be crowned a champion – with the honor going to Rodger Bone, representing Plant City’s Safe Choice Tree Service & Hauling with a total of 8.5 hot dogs eaten.
“It was my first ever hot dog eating contest,” Bone said. “It was friendly, it was nice, it was well setup and I feel like it was a great thing for the community and to get friends together. Other than that it was fun, it’s going to hurt later when I go back to work, but that’s about it. To prepare I just wanted to see if I could eat more than like four hot dogs, so earlier in the week I set up a dozen hot dogs and ate those, but they were a little easier to eat because they were different, the Oscar Mayer hot dogs, so they were a little bit smaller. Then I got here, saw those bigger hot dogs and got a little nervous, but it all panned out in the end.”
The event was sponsored by Plant City Premiere LUX Cine & Pizza Pub, providing all of the food for the first annual event.
“I thought it was awesome,” Lewis said. “I think the guys were surprised that the hot dogs were as big as they are. A lot of them kind of had a game plan going into it, but I think that when they saw the size of these wieners they said, ‘oh man, that’s not going to work.”