We have a wiener ... uh, a winner!

We here at The Board Room searched far and wide to find someone in the design industry to craft a new form of America's favorite food after it was deemed a choking hazard last month by a group of pediatricians. As luck would have it, the winner of our first contest is a huge fan of the hot dog as well. Here's the winning entry from Joshua Carney, president of Carney Engineering Group (York, PA), an eight-person structural engineering and steel design firm:

"Well, you’re talking my favorite food here, so while we should certainly put safety first, let’s solve the hot dog's other problems as well. First, by the time you layer on ketchup, relish, mustard, etc. (don’t forget mayo and BBQ sauce…my favorites), it’s a mess to eat. I am not what is known as a careful eater, hence the tendency for my shirt to look like my plate. Second, when I have a hot dog craving, I want it fast, and if I am grilling, there’s nothing less appealing than charred on the outside and cold on the inside.

"So, we basically need a way to encapsulate the fixins for shirt protection and reduce the overall material thickness for quicker and more even heating. The overall chunkiness needs to be minimized in order to not have big pieces for a kid to choke on. God knows my daughter does not actually chew them when she is eating them.

"So I propose a new and reinvented hot dog called the hot roll. It would be a sheet of yummy hot dog, say 4” x 6” x 1/8” or so, which can be pan-fried, grilled or steamed, then laid flat on a spread open hot dog roll for application of the good stuff. Then, simply roll it up in a cross between a taco and a burrito, and dig in. The thin profile would allow for fast heating, the shape is easily extruded and could have a layer applied to skin it and hold it together, it would not have big chunks causing choking, and as far as packaging….flat pack….need I say more? It could be tailored to different shapes for different holidays, and at the end of the day, is a more efficient delivery tool for the dog."

Sounds to me like these should be served at this year's Hot Firm Conference and Celebration in Washington, D.C. Who better than a group of design professionals to test the specs on this new creation?

Here's Josh's winning entry, followed by a rendering by ZweigWhite's resident architecture school grad and marketing coordinator, Sarah Nasznic. Apologies to those who didn't win. If you think you can do better, we'd love to hear from you. We'll be sure to launch another contest soon, so do stay tuned.:

Building the perfect eats

By now, you've all heard about the American Academy of Pediatrics' warning to parents about hot dogs being a choking hazard for young children and the need for a redesign of what is considered by many to be the perfect food. Who better to tackle this challenge than the people who design for a living, right?

It's time for the designers out there to put on your thinking caps and come up with a new design for this ballpark favorite. Forget about simply cutting the hot dog into smaller pieces; that's a copout, and it's never going to win you the prestige a challenge like this brings with it. We're looking for new ways of thinking, new approaches to the old way of doing business. We want to hear your ideas for making the hot dog safer for kids to eat. The winner will get an exclusive (possibly eBay-worthy) piece of ZweigWhite memorabilia you'll relish (pun intended, of course) to proudly display in your office and bring with you on that next pitch for a bridge, building, or highway.

The winner will be announced here on Friday, March 5. That's not a lot of time, so put some mustard on those designing tools or you'll be forced to play "ketchup" at the last second. Get those entries to us - and spread the word. Don't confuse this contest - which we'll call the Wurst Form - with our Best Firms To Work For rankings or Hot Firm list, though.