An Alamance Hot Dog Legend At a Crossroads

This article first appeared in The Food Section, which we have partnered with to look at the stories behind what we eat.

On a recent Thursday afternoon, a couple who looked to be on the leisure side of retirement age went to Zack’s Hotdogs in downtown Burlington, North Carolina for lunch. When a server arrived to take their order, the woman had one question.

“So,” she said in a voice seasoned with skepticism. “You have new owners?”

In the scheme of Zack’s history, businessman John Burton qualifies as a newcomer. The beloved grill, long manned by cooks said to take no more than two minutes to fulfill an order for 87 combo dogs, was open for nearly a century before Burton bought it.

But that was two years ago.

While the pace of restaurant closures has slowed slightly since the height of the pandemic, longstanding institutions across the South are still calling its quits, citing staffing challenges, increased competition, rising prices, and owner fatigue. As Kathleen Purvis reported for the Charlotte Ledger last week, Charlotte has lost three of its oldest restaurants since 2021, including Price’s Chicken Coop.

Whenever a decades-old restaurant with a loyal following announces shutdown plans, devastated fans take to Facebook to curse and mourn and float the idea that someone else ought to take over operations. Yet what the Zack’s ownership switch suggests is that at times it’s better to let classic places die a dignified death.

“I will never go there again,” one Yelper posted after a recent disappointing experience, expressing a common local opinion that the dubious diner was too polite to reference directly. “Zack’s was the place to go for a hot dog, but not anymore.”

Zack Touloupas worked in cafes throughout the Carolinas after immigrating from Greece in 1912, purchasing Alamance Hot Wienie Lunch in 1928. By the time he started adding seats, workers from City Hall, across the street, were already referring to the place as Zack’s Hot Dogs.

Zack’s moved once and was handed down twice before its deed was transferred to Burton on May 31, 2022. Otherwise, though, little ever changed at the cash-only restaurant, including the community’s affection for it. When a Durham Morning Herald columnist stopped by in 1973, she found a line formed at the counter long before noon. Waiting customers included “a young woman wearing an Afro haircut, a businessman with a vinyl bank envelope in his pocket, (and) an electrician in a blue uniform.” Gov. Kerr Scott ate there before voting, and Gov. Bob Scott ate there after physicals.

Invariably, Zack’s fans praised its swiftness and reasonable prices, but what distinguished the place from a million other hot dog joints was its secret-recipe chili, a thin blend of ground beef and onions—“we eliminated some of the high-class spices, especially garlic” at the start, Touloupas’ son told the Greensboro Daily News in 1975—and cheese dogs.

At Zack’s, and across Burlington, cheese dogs are meatless. Unless you ask for a wiener in your cheese dog, a cold block of orange cheese takes the place of the hot dog. For eaters unaccustomed to the preparation, or those who first encountered it under the new Zack’s regime, it registers as the half-formed idea of a grilled cheese sandwich. With the right sauce, though, it could pass for upside-down Cincinnati chili.

In any case, the operation was sufficiently impressive in its heyday that John Touloupas claimed a white-haired stranger once reached for his checkbook and tried to buy the business. “To this day, I think it was Colonel Sanders,” he said in 1995.

Almost three decades later, the Touloupas family cut a deal with Burton, who told reporters in the days after taking control that he wasn’t feeling up to a celebratory hot dog. But he swore he’d get to the restaurant soon and shared his vision for opening multiple Zack’s.

His first efforts didn’t go well.

On November 25, 2022, Burton opened a Zack’s outlet at the Holly Hill Mall. It was finished by February 2023. Then, on May 18, 2023, Burton opened a Zack’s in Mebane. It lasted until autumn.

By October 2023, Burton decided to franchise his two remaining Zack’s. A drive-thru on Garden Road, which debuted between the two ill-fated locations, now belongs to Phillip Snyder. Lane Passmore owns the flagship downtown store.

“Everything is going good,” Passmore said in a phone interview. “We implemented a new chicken sandwich, which is going well.”

While Zack’s was in the throes of location experimentation, another Alamance County landmark reemerged under new ownership. Jim’s Hot Dogs and Hamburgers in Graham closed in 2021, following a 60-year run. Exactly two years later, it celebrated its grand reopening under new owner Santos Solorzano, who owns the Salvadoran restaurant across the street.

Solorzano didn’t return messages, but newspaper accounts say Jim’s son, David Covington, helped Solorzano and his son keep “everything the same—right down to the chili.”

I never ate at Jim’s before the changeover, so I can’t comment on the continuity. But the chili I tasted was terrific and served at breakneck speed by a kind staffer who worried I’d “parch” if I didn’t order a drink. (Obviously, I asked for Cheerwine.) The liveliness of the room confirmed I wasn’t the only one happy to be eating at Jim’s.

In other words, it’s not an iron-clad rule that legends shouldn’t have second lives. But based on my experiences in cheese dog territory, I believe a successor has to approach a classic restaurant in the spirit in which it was founded. Of course, a restaurant rooted in humble food and hard work is going to thrive under immigrant ownership, even if red wieners with block cheese aren’t a Latin American specialty.

As for Zack’s, Passmore says it’s regaining traction. The chain rolled out a new food truck last month at Red Oak Brewery in Whitsett.

Hanna Raskin is editor and publisher of The Food Section, a newsletter covering food and drink across the South. You can reach her at hanna@theassemblync.com.