For 62 years Florence Berman (BS47) and her husband, Maurie, have run Superdawg, a successful family business and a Chicago landmark. Why are they still at it? "Pride in ownership, pride in creation," Berman tells a group of SESP undergraduates on a visit through the learning and organizational change program.
After Berman graduated and married her high school sweetheart in 1947, she began teaching school in Chicago while her husband attended Northwestern on the G.I. Bill at night in accounting. He suggested that they earn income by opening a hot dog business from May to October, so they rented a 50-foot lot near the local swimming pool and built a small building. Maurie Berman designed the distinctive structure topped with 12-foot winking hot dog sculptures, and he named the business Superdawg after the Superman comics of the 1940s.
Florence Berman attributes the success of the business to her husband's "creativity and determination." She says, "He created a brand that is unique." In addition, the couple has been mindful of the importance of pleasing customers, no matter what their requests.
Hard work has played a key role in their success too, Berman told the SESP students. In the early years the couple never worked fewer than 12 hours a day, she says. "The most important thing is that you have to make up your mind that you're going to work really hard. ... Without watching over everything, it's not going to go," says Berman, who still works the lunch shift and during the summer.
Now the Bermans' oldest son, daughter, and son-in-law are involved in the business, along with a 27-year-old granddaughter. "I'm lucky," she says in reference to her close-knit, supportive family. "We raised very good children who allowed us the ability to work."
Looking back at the history of the business, Berman muses, "So many things have changed in those 60 years." At the beginning, the now-busy suburban location was open fields, where families took hayrides. A hot dog cost 22 cents, and a Coke cost 10 cents. Streetcars ran in front. One thing that hasn't changed since the 1950s is that Superdawg still has carhops -- and is the only place in Chicago that does. And the business is in the same location, at Devon and Nagle, although the menu has expanded and a new Superdawg location has opened in Wheeling.
Berman's descriptions of the Northwestern campus reveal how much the University has changed too. "I can't recognize much on campus now," says Berman. When she was at Northwestern during World War II, nearly all of the students on campus were women. Many of the current buildings didn't exist, and Scott Hall was headquarters for commuting students. She commuted from the Northwest Side of Chicago, taking two buses and two streetcars.
The Northwestern students are impressed by how different college must have been - but also by how much they have in common with Florence Berman. "She's so SESP," says senior Jessica Garcia after the students posed with a smiling Berman in front of the dancing hot dogs.
Photo caption:
Jessica Garcia, advisor Megan Redfearn, Florence Berman (BS47), Jane Wong and Kayleigh Wettstein in front of Superdawg.