Who Owns Sabrett?

Samuel Ogus and Fritz Frankel founded Sabrett in 1926, building a business supplying frankfurters and delicatessen products to New York City food vendors. The brand's signature product, a spicy all-beef frankfurter in natural casing, became the standard dog for the city's pushcart vendors, and the blue and yellow Sabrett umbrella became a fixture of Manhattan street life.

For more than three decades, the company was run by the sons-in-law and grandsons-in-law of the founding partners. Key family members included Kurt Teitler, Jules Frankel, and Maurice "Mac" Katz, who joined in 1958, followed by Eric Merlin and Boyd Adelman in the 1960s. Hans Mueller, a German immigrant sausage maker, worked at Sabrett from 1956 to 1994 and served as working foreman through the brand's expansion era.

Sabrett's customer relationships ran deep into New York's food culture. Nathan's Famous bought dogs from Sabrett for its Coney Island operation in earlier eras, and Papaya King, ballpark suppliers, and hundreds of independent pushcart operators built their menus around the brand.

Gregory Papalexis acquired the company in 1989 through Marathon Enterprises, purchasing rights to the Sabrett name. Under Marathon, the brand kept its foodservice heart while pushing into retail: packaged franks and condiments moved into supermarkets across the Northeast and then nationally, letting consumers outside New York buy the same product sold from street carts.

The brand remains New York made. Production happens at two Bronx plants, with the distribution center shipping to retail, wholesale, and foodservice accounts across the country. The company celebrated the brand's continued independence even as most regional meat brands were absorbed into national conglomerates.