The 1950s saw the invention of such classic convenience foods as Swanson frozen dinners, cereals like Cocoa Puffs, and food-related innovations like the first home microwave and Saran Wrap. It also gave us cheese dogs — that is, the kind with the cheese inside the dog. And, surprisingly, it wasn’t one of the major players in the national hot dog scene, like Oscar Mayer or Ball Park, but a small Little Rock, Arkansas-based company called the Finkbeiner Meatpacking Company. In 1956, it introduced the innovative frank via its Arkansas Maid brand.
Like the birth of Pizza Hut’s three-cheese stuffed crust pizza, which came about after dairy farmers produced too much milk, the cheese-stuffed hot dog was one of those purely American inventions wherein the question wasn’t “Do we need this?” but more along the lines of “What would happen if we stuffed cheese into this?” Long before Oscar Mayer introduced its version back in 1982, the Finkbeiner family asked themselves this question and came up with a revolutionary food product (along with a version stuffed with chili). Today, numerous brands offer a similar product, but it was this small Arkansas company that did it first, though the exact details of how the invention came to be have been lost.
An innovative idea ahead of its time
Long before the invention of the cheese dog, the company patriarch, Christian Finkbeiner, who was originally from Germany, moved to Chicago, then on the way to becoming the heart of the meatpacking industry. In 1915, he and his family moved to Arkansas and eventually settled in Little Rock. By the 1950s, the family-owned business had grown to become a regional brand, sponsored a local television show featuring the brand’s spokesman, Volmer “Cactus” Vick and introduced the groundbreaking cheese-filled hot dog.
Some sources credit Chris Finkbeiner, one of Christian’s grandsons and the company’s public face, as the inventor, but there’s a lack of definitive evidence. What we do know is that cheese and hot dogs have had a long history in America that has run the gamut as a topping on hot dog styles as varied as the Southwest’s Sonoran and D.C.s half-smoke. Cheese, especially with chili, seems to have a natural affinity for the frank, unlike some more unusual hot dog toppings like seaweed or a fried egg. So the logic of taking cheese from off the top and putting it into the dog seems pretty solid.
After the success of the cheese dog, Chris Finkbeiner ran for governor of Arkansas with less satisfactory results. He lost badly and also flopped as a wrestling promoter. So while he may not have been a great politician or very good at shilling for wrestlers, the company he and his family owned did give the world cheese-stuffed hot dogs, which is something.
