Taking Old School Dogs to New Heights

I never guessed that on my "going home" vacation I would find a story out of a hot dog.

It all began with food!  In my case, it’s a very important part of my day and I am always on the lookout for foods that are different, unique, or places that make regular foods unique or different…alas, a new take on the hot dog!  Enter Pukadog in Waikiki…

Pukadog (“poo-kah” meaning hole in Hawaiian) is such a simple concept yet it screams innovation.  Instead of the regular hot dog with a bun, halved, and traditional ketchup, mustard, relish, and onions covering the dog, this place turns hot dogging on it’s head.

Let’s start with the bun…a large metal spike pierces the solid bun and toasts the middle.  Then you get to pick your garlic lemon secret sauce (mild to extra hot) which is squeezed into the bun along with your choices of fruit relishes (banana, coconut, star fruit, mango, pineapple, guava or papaya) Then they take either a polish sausage or a veggie dog, inserts that into the 1/2 filled bun and adds yellow, dijon, or lilikoi mustard with either ketchup or sweet pickle relish.  Now imagine each taste bud filled bite of your dog swimming in the harmonious fruit relishes, garlic lemon sauce and designer mustards…now that's a new twist on an old food.

This was a delicious segway for the concept of innovation.  Innovation doesn’t mean that you need to come up with a completely new product or service.  It doesn’t even mean that you have to be such a creative person in order to innovate.  What is does mean is that you need to be your own person and add your own personality to whatever you do…it means to be passionate, not mediocre, when it comes to your education, your work, your talents, your career, or your future.  Long live your new “pukadog”!