Hot Dog Restaurant's Promotional T-shirts Cause Quite a Stir

When it comes to employee T-shirts, there are a few dos and don'ts. Do make your logo easy to read and the center of attention. Don't go for innuendo that customers might deem vulgar. With that, let's take a look at the controversy surrounding employee T-shirts at a New Jersey hot dog shop.

Weenies in Madison, N.J., opened its second location on Main Street. While employees have been wearing the T-shirts in question for several years at the other location, residents at the new location had some fiery opinions upon seeing the shirts.

The black T-shirts feature the Weenies logo and say "Grab Yours Here" with an arrow pointing downward to the website in small font.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BowPV4ShQ4x/?taken-by=weenieshotdogs

Some residents of Madison find the tongue-in-cheek T-shirts vulgar and believe they're inappropriate for employee T-shirts.

“They really are not nice,” Madison resident Gloryann Torres told CBS New York. “They’re asking for trouble.”

But Weenies co-owner Michael Dey said residents are worked up over nothing.

“They should lighten up a little bit,” he said. “We don’t wake up in the morning with bad intentions. We don’t wake up in the morning with the intention of perverting children.

“It’s just marketing, it’s strictly interruptive,” he continued. “You can look at the shirt and see whatever you want to see, it’s what you make of it. We don’t send any kind of particular message with it.”

Dey said his wife helped design the T-shirts, and that the store already sold more than 50 T-shirts to customers on opening day.

Residents have been voicing their discontent on social media in the hopes that the hot dog shop would choose a different T-shirt design, but Dey said he has no plans to back down.

You know what they say: All press is good press. So while it might have been a controversial move, it looks like it might pay off for the restaurant in the long run. The important lesson here is that you have to know your customers. What works at one location might not work at another.