Dat Dog no longer planning to open Baton Rouge location
BATON ROUGE, LA (WAFB) - According to the Baton Rouge Business Report, Dat Dog is no longer planning to open a location in Baton Rouge.
The gourmet hot dog chain based out of New Orleans was planning to open a location in the Arlington Marketplace, but that is no longer happening.
David Halpern and his nephew, Teva Sempel, announced in 2017 they’d open Baton Rouge’s first Dat Dog in the 3,000 square foot suite at West Lee Drive, Burbank Drive, and Ben Hur Road near LSU, but earlier in 2019, they announced they wouldn’t be able to do it.
“It’s a shame because it’s part of the new development of Baton Rouge and it’s in a great location,” Halpern said of the suite in an interview with the Business Report, “but the space doesn’t work for us with the way that typical Dat Dog restaurants are designed.”
The Business Report says they’ve confirmed with The Eisenburg Company, which owns the space, that the location will instead be leased to Five Guys.
Progress has also reportedly stalled on two other possible locations in Baton Rouge for a Dat Dog.
“If you look at that street corner by Arlington Marketplace, that’s not really who we are; putting us in a strip center and commercializing us doesn’t make us Dat Dog anymore,” Paul Tuennerman, CEO of Dat Dog Enterprises, said in a Business Report interview. “We are authentically New Orleans and need to make sure we reflect this as we expand.”
A Baton Rouge location hasn’t been entirely ruled out, but there aren’t any plans at the moment to open one, Tuennerman says.
Dat Dog features more than 30 toppings, including unconventional options like blackberry sauce, guacamole, and crawfish étoufée, and sausages made from crawfish, alligator, duck, and the traditional beef wiener.
The company regularly hosts fundraising events on and off-site for causes of all kinds, especially those related to animal welfare, at-risk youth, and education.
For more about the restaurant, visit DatDog.com.
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