All of us, at least once in our lives, has asked ourselves one question. Why in the name of god do hot dogs come in packs of 10 but the damn buns come in packs of eight?
Turns out that the answer is as predictably annoying and stupid as you thought it was. The two different industries have just never seen fit to get their shit together. Nobody with skin in the game will likely ever say it out loud, but I’ll bet that’s deliberate. Forcing people to buy more stuff than they need means more money for them, so if they ain’t broke, why fix it?
The reasons for this are partly industrial and concern the different ways in which hot dogs and buns are processed. Meat is usually packaged in bulk, a pound at a time, and the average hot dog weighs 1.6 ounces, which comes out to 10 hot dogs. However, this division is at odds with hot dog bun production practices.
According to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council, baking equipment used to create the buns often produces them in sets of four, which leads to the eight buns in packages that line the grocery store shelves today.