From a story on this week’s Weekend America:

Hot Dogs and Buns, Together at Last

For years, a dilemma has plagued hot dog lovers — what to do with the extra buns. Their prayers have been answered. Manufacturers have reached an historic truce vowing to sell hot dogs and buns in the same quantities — packs of 8. We talk to a hot dog vendor about the good news.

Strange little story - a Chicago hot-dog manufacturer exec got tired of hearing about the incompatibility between the typical number of hot dogs in a package and the typical number of buns in a package.  The meat industry likes neat packages of one pound, which is typically 8 hot dogs.  Bakers like dozens or a fraction thereof.  You either run out of dogs, or buns.  Finally the exec got fed up and started discussions with the bun makers to fix the problem.  They’re promoting a universal convention of 8-packs.  Most of the hot dogs I buy come in 10 packs, and the buns in 8 packs.

This kind of cooperation is often hailed by vendors in the IT industry, and I’m glad they didn’t have to found a consortium or promote government regulation to solve the problem.  But the core problem here is not a lack of communication between hot dog vendors and bun bakers.  It’s between those two industries and their customers.

Why is "8" the magic number?  What’s wrong with 10, or 6?  Each might have a specific consumer demand.  The problem is not enough ranges of choices.  If hot dogs are available in 6, 8, 10, or 16 packs, that seems like a good thing to me.  The only problem is if the buns are not also available in a similar range of choices.  Bun and hot dog makers should provide more variety, not less!  I predict in the future customers will be asking these same vendors why they can’t find a 10-pack of hotdogs anywhere.