Virtual Event - Lloyd Handwerker

Join us for a fascinating live discussion with Lloyd Handwerker.

June 8, 2023
7:00pm EDT

Virtual Event - FREE
Once you register a zoom link will be sent by email on the day of the event.

Preserving NJ Speakers Virtual Event

Lloyd Handwerker is the grandson of Nathan Handwerker, the founder of the iconic Nathan’s Famous hot dog empire.

In 1912 Nathan Handwerker, a Polish Jew, one of 13 children of a poor Jewish shoemaker, came through Ellis Island. He found work as a delivery boy and later obtained a job slicing bread rolls at Feltman's German Gardens, a restaurant in Coney Island, Brooklyn. The restaurant sold franks (hot dogs) for 10 cents each.

One story claims that to help build his savings faster, his only meals were the hot dogs that he could eat at work for free. In 1916 after much hard work and saving he started his Coney Island business with $300. In 1921, Handwerker named his previously unnamed hot dog stand Nathan's Hot Dogs after Sophie Tucker's hit song "Nathan, Nathan, Why You Waitin?"

Lloyd Handwerker's life long passion was to make a documentary about his grandfather's story and also to chronicle his family’s history in his book “Nathan’s Famous: A Family Saga of Coney Island, the American Dream, and the Search for the Perfect Hot Dog.”

Lloyd said one of his grandfather’s first jobs was in a bakery in his home country of Poland, a job he enjoyed because, as one of 13 children, “he knew what starvation was at home.”

Lloyd Handwerker received a B.A. from Oberlin College in 1981 and in 1990 received an M.F.A. from N.Y.U. Film School. He continued to work for over 25 years in film production as an assistant cameraman and cinematographer on both narrative and documentary features, shorts, commercials and music videos.

Once you register a zoom link will be sent by email on the day of the event.