LIHU‘E — Part-time Koloa resident Don Schmanski has laid out on a platter a fund-raising idea he knows will cook sausages, but also hopes it fires up entrepreneurial juices in high-school students. He has donated $1,000 to leaders at each
LIHU‘E — Part-time Koloa resident Don Schmanski has laid out on a platter a fund-raising idea he knows will cook sausages, but also hopes it fires up entrepreneurial juices in high-school students.
He has donated $1,000 to leaders at each of the island’s three public high schools for the purposes of purchasing one of his patent-pending, Hole-e-Cow sausage-and-bun systems. And he wants the students to take a hands-on role in all aspects of the fund-raising, from marketing to running the machines to handling the money.
His idea is to “build a little entrepreneurial fire in them,” he said. “It’s not for profit. It’s for high schools,” said Schmanski, a retired rocket scientist by trade who divides his time between residences in Koloa and Eagle Lake, Calif.
He and his son came up with the idea of a bun-toasting machine the puts a square hole in the length of a hot dog bun without punching all the way through, thus allowing condiments to be added in the gaps between the square hole and round hot dog or sausage, and not having to worry about the condiments seeping out the bottom of the bun.
So was born Hole-e-Cow, with versions in the works for kosher sausages (Hole-e-Moses), vegetarian (Hole-e-Ghost — no meat), and fish (Hole-e-Mackeral) varieties. “It’s a lot of fun,” he says with a laugh.
The original idea was conceived in a way to help high-school sports teams, as his son is a wrestling coach in Nevada and was tired of the perennial carwashes and other fundraisers to pay for uniforms, travel and other needs, he said.
“The purpose of it was to help high schools,” both in terms of raising funds and in terms of developing entrepreneurial spirits in students, he added. “If we can develop entrepreneurial spirit in kids, they can make a bunch of money.”
It may be the special sauce, Mango Bango, which makes the dogs irresistible. Concocted by Sarah Schmanski, Don Schmanski’s wife, the sauce includes mangoes, wasabi, lemon, horseradish, and a few other ingredients.
“All we’re doing is reinventing the hot dog, basically,” he said. The sausages are made of beef, chicken and pork, and the sauce is good on chicken as well as hot dogs, he explained. The fact that the entire system includes just the bun-toaster and a hot-dog steamer, along with the sauce, buns, sausages and special bags to hold the finished products, minimizes inventory, he continued. “It’s a gourmet package we’ve put together,” aimed at raising the perceived image of the hot dog so high-school leaders “can make a few bucks selling it,” he said.
Funds donated to the schools for the purchases of the machines came from Schmanski’s charitable educational trust fund, with his only hopes of having the money returned is if the students make lots of money with the systems and decide to return the donations to the trust. That would basically allow him to offer the systems to other schools throughout the state, a mission he’s already on with help from former County Councilmember Ron Kouchi.
At the Bishop Museum on one afternoon, between 250 and 400 Hole-e-Cows were sold. When the Schmanskis brought 15 dozen to a local baseball game recently, they sold out by the third inning. At a Kaua‘i Interscholastic Federation football game, all of the available Hole-e-Cows were gone before half-time, he said.
Also at football games, women have come up and asked him for a smaller version that could be used in homes. He’s working on that now, he said.
The system was so new to the high-school leaders that they didn’t use it during KIF basketball season, he said.
The only way he’ll make money off of his system is if it takes off commercially, which it has the potential to do.
Koa Trading officials are handling the commercial side of the business, and owners of Tahina’s Tasty Treats have bought a machine to put in their kiosk outside the Lihu‘e Kmart location, he added.
“It’s the only dog that feeds the hand that bites it,” he said.
“We’re here because of Dennis (Fujimoto),” Don and Sarah Schmanski said recently when they brought their machines into The Garden Island break room to give the newspaper staff a sample of their products. In his Happy Camper column, Fujimoto earlier asked the question, “What’s a Hole-e-Cow?”
The Schmanskis, and a helper, came to answer that question, and give the staff lunch at the same time.
Paul C. Curtis, associate editor, may be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 224) or pcurtis@pulitzer.net.
