Eliyahu Gasson | editor-in-chief

The small, silver Becco’s hot dog cart looks like a prop from a movie set in Manhattan. It’s dotted with an eclectic collection of stickers from around the country, and a big, yellow umbrella advertising Sabrett hot dogs sticks out of the top.

That look, said owner David Becki, is one of the reasons his business is in demand.

“The hot dog stand makes you feel like you’re not in Pittsburgh because there’s not that many of them out there,” he said.

Becki, 55, got into the hot dog vending business around 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, when he was coaching swimming at Mt. Lebanon.

“It was just so weird. The kids had no concession. They had to sit six feet apart … So I bought this [stand] just to give hot dogs free to the kids,” he said.

After getting the necessary permits from Allegheny County to sell his hot dogs, he was invited to set up in front of Hitchhiker Brewing in Mt. Lebanon, a milestone market by a sticker on his cart.

“So I was handing free hot dogs to the kids and doing Hitchhiker and then people started asking me to come to places,” Becki said.

The business was also inspired by his family. His grandmother sold hot dogs out of her antique shop on Sundays and his father, nicknamed Becco, would use the money to take Becki’s mother out while they were dating in college.

“That’s why I named it Becco,” Becki said. “That was sort of an honor to my dad to call it Becco’s. Hot dogs have been in my blood forever.”

It takes Becki about 15 minutes to set his cart up. He unhooks it from his car and rolls it into position before filling up his small three sinks with water and preps the boiler for the hot dogs and the steamer for the buns.

Becki’s signature menu item is piled high with sauerkraut, relish, Sabrett Onions in Sauce, bread and butter chips, banana peppers, brown mustard and celery salt.

When he’s selling in Schenley Park, Becki promotes his Schenley Sweets, a Sabretto hot dog sat on a bed of light brown sugar and topped with sauerkraut, pineapple, yellow mustard and cinnamon, a combination he came up with after he was asked to make an item named for the park.

“I was at home thinking about chili, and then I had brown sugar, I had pineapple, I had cinnamon, I had sauerkraut and of course, I had yellow mustard,” he said. “The yellow mustard mixed with the brown sugar — it does something where it’s like the ultimate sweet and sour taste.”

Friendly competition

Becki wasn’t shy about shouting out other hot dog vendors in the city, Shady Dog and Yovi’s, who he said helped him get started with some advice.

“Those guys are amazing,” he said. “I can’t even begin to tell you how much Yovi’s would actually give me places to go. When I first started out, he was like, ‘Listen, I can’t make this. Can you show up?’”

Yovi’s, is owned by Lee Yovanov, who brought the business from Chicago in the ’80s. Yovanov’s business transitioned from a brick and mortar store to a food truck before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States.

Yovanov said he ran into Becki at a gas station about five years ago, and the two started talking about selling hot dogs.

“I had the food truck and I pretty much told them it’s a great idea having a cart or a truck,” Yovanov said.

“There’s plenty of business out there and I told him just have a good product, a reasonable price and to take care of your customers.”

Shady Dog owner John Spellman has also been in business about 16 years at the intersection of Liberty, South Aiken and Centre Avenues in Bloomfield. His advice to Becki, he said, was about finding locations and securing permits.

“You know, you can’t just set up anywhere you want,” he said. “Me, I’m considered a stationary vendor. I stand in one spot and that’s where my spot is all the time. [Becki], he’s not really a stationary vendor. He kind of floats around, goes wherever he can go.”

Still swimming

Before he was hawking hot dogs, Becki spent his time around the pool and started swimming around 1982 at the age of 11, following his sisters.

He was on the Bethel Park swim team through high school and also swam at West Virginia University and the University of Pittsburgh.

When he returned to Pittsburgh, his former coach asked him to come back to his alma mater and take over.

Becki said he stayed at Bethel Park for around 10 years before switching to Deer Lakes School District and later to Mt. Lebanon to coach the USA swimming program, Mt. Lebanon Aqua Club, where he would spend around 12 years.

Weston Chung, a former Bethel Park swimmer, had Becki as a coach from elementary through to his freshman year of high school. He was around when Becki started his hot dog journey.

“Coach Becki has always been a free-spirited person — spontaneous,” Chung said. “I think he just really liked providing hot dogs to the teammates and kids he coached after swim meets or the middle school meets and just interacting with them.”

Becki said he took a year away from coaching to focus on his cart. He started back again in 2025 at North Hills Aquatics.

“I brought the hot dog stand out one time at North Hills early this past fall and the kids fell in love with it,” he said.

‘It makes for a fun atmosphere’

Becki’s policy is if a customer doesn’t like their hotdog, he’ll buy it back. And, he claims, he’s only done that once in his roughly five years in business.

For him, he said, being in the hot dog business isn’t just about making money. It’s about meeting people and having fun.

“That’s the thing about this thing. It’s fun,” Becki said. “When I’m handing you a hot dog, we’re talking about whatever. Sometimes it’s about hot dogs, sometimes it’s about the Steelers … This is a Godsend. I wish I would have started this back when I was 30.”

Eliyahu Gasson can be reached at gassone@duq.edu