Days of Hot Dog Cart Fame

If you had asked me a day or two ago about my working career, I probably would’ve forgotten this chapter entirely. It was the early 1970s, just after the Vietnam War ended, when engineers were being laid off in record numbers—and finding a job was nearly impossible.

The memory came rushing back unexpectedly as I was dodging cars along the construction zone on Route 50 between Sacramento and West Sacramento, listening to a Proof/Sporkful podcast called The Hot Dog King. The episode told the story of a New York City hot dog vendor who fought city ordinances—and the combined powers of Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump—to keep his cart on the street.

That story transported me back to my brief time in the hot dog vending business—not selling the franks, but building the carts they were sold from.

After being let go from my first engineering job at a large international technology company, I was happy to take any kind of work. That’s how I found myself in Long Island City, Queens, working for Admar, a company that made what were then called “pushcarts,” but more accurately were mobile food vending carts.

If you were in New York back then, you’d recognize them instantly: stainless steel carts with bicycle wheels, gleaming in the sunlight under the familiar yellow-and-blue Sabrett umbrellas. Those carts were Admar’s bread and butter—and their signature diamond-patterned stainless steel became a New York icon.

For about six weeks, I worked in Admar’s sheet-metal shop, helping design and refine those food carts. To passersby, they might have looked simple, but each one required real engineering. The carts had to balance storage, cooking, and cooling systems in a space barely larger than a shopping cart—keeping the hot dogs and onions steaming while the sodas stayed cold, all on a summer day in the city.

We designed compartments for everything: rolls, napkins, ketchup, mustard, sauerkraut, and those legendary sautéed onions. The biggest challenge was the physics of heat and cold—the eternal battle between the boiling water bath and the ice bin, separated only by very few inches.

Admar’s secret was craftsmanship. The company had started just after World War II, founded by Ed Beller and Mark Monies—the “Ad” and “Mar” in the name. They first built restaurant equipment, then moved into street vending carts. During the 1964–65 New York World’s Fair, Admar reportedly had a “field day,” producing Pepsi-branded food carts for the fairgrounds in Flushing Meadows.

My stint at Admar didn’t last long. A relative of one of the owners needed a job, and since I was the newest hire, I was the first to go. But for those few weeks, I had a front-row seat to a small but enduring part of New York’s street-food history.

Admar carts became fixtures across the city’s sidewalks and parks. In the 1990s, the company was acquired by Worksman Trading Corporation, a manufacturer known for its heavy-duty industrial bicycles and vending trikes. Worksman still makes stainless steel vending carts today, proudly tracing their lineage back to Admar’s postwar designs.

As for me, it would be many months before I landed another engineering job—and I eventually had to move out of state. But that unexpected detour at Admar left its mark. While I waited for the next chapter of my career to begin, I worked on my tennis game.

~ Al Zagofsky