Students will soon have a new place to run to for a late-night snack.
Cutie’s, a hot dog shop on Mill Avenue and Sixth Street, opens its doors Friday. Convenient for the hungry, nocturnal college student, the store plans to stay open well after midnight on weekends.
The eatery will be open from 11 a.m. to 3 a.m. Thursday through Saturday and will close at 10 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday.
Cutie’s owners Robert Graham and Max Hunt, both 2006 ASU graduates, said they decided to open the store because they thought something was missing on Mill.
“Both of us liked hot dogs,” Graham said. “Every time we kind of went to a hot dog place … the guy serving it was always grungy and gross.”
The shop was originally going to be called Weenies and Bikinis, Hunt said, but they thought Cutie’s was catchier.
In order to develop ideas for the store, Hunt and Graham traveled cross-country to cities like Chicago and Los Angeles to examine different hot dog establishments.
They eventually agreed that their store would be tailored to the college crowd.
“We wanted something down by the campus and [to] really target the campus and the late-night crowd,” Graham said.
They originally started looking in Scottsdale but then saw a spot in Tempe.
“We saw a corner that had a lot of potential that’s next to landmark restaurants,” Hunt said.
The store’s spot, the site of two old kiosks that were combined into one, sits right next to the pizza restaurant Slices.
Cutie’s won’t be the traditional hot-dog-out-of-a-stand place, Hunt said. It’ll be selling all-natural beef, chicken and turkey dogs from Applegate Farms.
There will also be an outdoor patio with seating and music.
Women will be serving the hot dogs and interacting with the customers, Graham said. Men will mostly cook the food.
There will be student and city employee specials.
The owners will also be starting a program called Cutie’s for the Cause.
At the end of the fiscal year, if 50,000 hot dogs are sold, Cutie’s will donate 10,000 hot dogs to a local food bank, Graham said.
He said he hopes that this can become a yearly tradition.
With the grand opening on Friday, Cutie’s will be giving away 1,000 hot dogs from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. then reopen the same day at 8 p.m. to 3 a.m.
“We are going to be the coolest spot on Mill, and everyone needs to come,” Graham said.
Reach the reporter at mpareval@asu.edu
