Why is it that hot dogs come in packages of 10 and the buns have 8 per pack?

Answer 1

You get ten hot dogs and eight buns per package because meat packers like things that come in pounds and bakers hate things that come in tens.

The meat-packing side of this is easiest to understand. Your standard-issue hot dog, a product that generations of consumers have found to be convenient, comes ten to the pound. If you've got 10,000 pounds of hot dogs, therefore, you know you've got 10,000 packages.

The situation with bakers is a bit murkier. Here are some of the "explanations" you'll hear:
(1) We do it that way because everybody else does. If we started doing ten to the package we'd have to charge more, consumers wouldn't notice they were getting more, and we'd lose business. Fine, but why did the first guy start packing eight?
(2) There is something inherent in baking tray or oven design that makes ten impractical to produce. Not true. Continental Baking, maker of the Wonder brand and one of the largest companies in the industry, sells both eight-packs and ten-packs, depending on "consumer preferences and local market conditions." What this means is that if enough people want ten-packs and everybody else is selling them, Continental will too. St. Louis, for one, is said to be a big ten-pack town.
(3) Ten-packs are a clumsy shape and tend to get broken up when they're tossed around on supermarket shelves. This is close to the truth, I think (see below), but obviously not that close, since Continental somehow manages to cope.

The true explanation, in my opinion, is that bakers just don't like tens. They prefer dozens, or more generally, multiples of three and four, notably four, six, eight, and twelve. These quantities lend themselves to compact packaging--three rows of four, two rows of three, two slabs of two by two (e.g., hamburger buns), and so on. Ten lends itself only to one row of ten or two rows of five, which are seldom compact shapes. Therefore, the baking mind-set--and here's where we start getting into anthropology--is such that you instinctively regard ten as an unwieldy number. When the pioneers of bun baking were trying to figure out how to package their product, they probably figured what the hey, eight makes a squarish package, so that's what we'll go with, without even considering the unique circumstances that made ten more appropriate. The situation has been allowed to continue because the Teeming Millions meekly submit to it. Oscar Mayer says that of the 50,000 or so consumer letters they get each year, only 10 or 15 complain about the hot dog/bun mismatch.

Answer 2

It is deliberate, so that you either have to buy an extra pack of buns or an extra pack of hot dogs, unless you need exactly 40, 80, 120, 160, etc.

Answer 3

Because bread tends to go off faster than hot dogs - I believe its to reduce waste

Although now most supermarkets stock things in all sizes. Usually the buns come in 6s which is better for most - unless you are a greedy b****rd like myself, or with a large family

Answer 4

A ploy by the greedy breadmakers to get you to buy two packs of hot dog buns!

Answer 5

to promote extra buns of route. yet in case you save careful it type of feels that I bear in mind seeing some manufacturers that had purely 8 in a equipment, perhaps they were the bun-length ones. that ought to assert like those more effective, hate that extra little bit of dry bun on the end of a very good warm canines.

Answer 6

To get you to buy more hot dogs and buns.

Answer 7

I've never seen hotdogs in packages of 10. Only in packages of 8.

Answer 8

HA HA! Funny! Wish I could answer that one! Good question.

Answer 9

Because they are sold by the pound, not by count.

Answer 10

its a marketing ploy so you always need more