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food / travel

Red Hot Chilean Chain Hopes To Crown Itself Hot Dog King Of South America

Chileans love hot dogs. Just ask G&N, whose Doggis restaurants dominate the local fast food market with annual domestic sales of roughly $100 million. The company is now hoping Doggis will be able to fetch similar earnings across the continent.

Hot Dog, South American-style (Paul Lowry)
Hot Dog, South American-style (Paul Lowry)


* NEWSBITES

SANTIAGO -- Already the top dog in Chile's fast food market, the Santiago-based holding company Gastronomía y Negocios (G&N) is now looking to export its signature franchise – Doggis – to the rest of the South America.

The company first went sniffing around for new business in Brazil , where it inked a deal in 2009 to open its hot dog restaurants in partnership with the Brazilian company BFFC. Little more than two years later there are already 15 Doggis operating in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

G&N is now setting its sights on Chile's northern neighbor, Peru, where it just opened a flagship Doggis in Lima. The company expects that in time it can sell as many hot dogs in Peru as it does in Chile, where completos – as hot dogs are called there – are something of a national obsession. Right now, Chile accounts for roughly $100 million of the food vendor's $130 million in annual sales.

What's next after Peru? Colombia , according to the Gastronomía y Negocios' 2012-2014 three-year expansion plan. "We're doing things bit by bit," says G&N's general manager, Mauricio Taladriz. Doggis now has roughly 160 restaurants in total. "That's a perfectly reasonable number to expect in Peru as well," says Taladriz.

In Peru, G&N has partnered with Delosi, which already operates franchises of popular U.S. brands like Starbucks, Chili's, Burger King and Pizza Hut.

None of this is to say that the hot dog market in Chile – where people like to garnish their dogs with pureed avocado, diced tomatoes and healthy gobs of mayonnaise – is by any means saturated. Over the next five years, the company plans to double its domestic presence by focusing specifically on smaller cities.

Read more from AméricaEconomía in Spanish

Photo - Paul Lowry

*Newsbites are digest items, not direct translations

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FOCUS: Israel-Palestine War

Turkey-Israel Relations? It's Complicated — But The Gaza War Is Different

Turkish President Erdogan has now called on the International Criminal Court to go after Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu for war crimes, as the clash between the two regional powers has reached a new low.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Elias Kassem

Since the arrival two decades ago of now President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s relationship with Israel has been a mix of deep ideological conflict and cover-your-eyes realpolitik .

On the one hand, Erdogan has positioned himself as a kind of global spokesman for the Palestinian cause . His Justice and Development Party has long publicly and financially supported Hamas, which shares similar roots in the 20th-century Muslim Brotherhood movement.

And yet, since 2001 when Erdogan first came to power, trade between Turkey and Israel has multiplied from $1.41 to $8.9 billion in 2022. Moreover, both countries see major potential in transporting newly discovered Israeli natural gas to Europe, via Turkey.

The logic of shared interests clashes with the passions and posturing of high-stakes geopolitics. Diplomatic relations have been cut off, then restored, and since October 7, the countries’ respective ambassadors have been recalled, with accusations flying between Erdogan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Still, over the past 48 hours, Turkish-Israeli relations may have hit an all-time low.

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