After almost 80 years, this Bay Area hot dog icon is closing

The lights will go out soon at a Bay Area hot dog chain's nearly 80-year-old location.

Caspers Hot Dogs in Richmond, at 2530 MacDonald Ave., will serve its last Chicago-style and chili cheese dogs with quarter-pound franks on Friday, company general manager Paul Rustigian, a grandson of Caspers co-founder Paul Agajan, told the Chronicle.

Agajan said that the restaurant has been underperforming for years, so the company opted to sell it and the property to Courtland "Corky" Booze, a former city council member who won a seat in 2010 after nine failed campaigns and plans to open his own hot dog restaurant. Rustigian declined to state the sale price. Booze was not immediately available for comment.

"It's a bittersweet thing to close a location that is as historic as this one," Rustigian said. "We did well in this community and feel proud about what we accomplished," The closing will leave four remaining Caspers locations - in Oakland, Hayward, Dublin and Pleasant Hill. Caspers closed its 40-year-old Walnut Creek location in 2023.

Caspers dates back to 1934, when Agajan and his business partner, Stephen Beklian, both immigrants from Armenia, arrived in Oakland. They opened their first hot dog restaurant on Oakland's First Avenue, taking cues from the franks served in Chicago - on steamed buns with yellow mustard and fresh vegetables - where they had first settled in the U.S. The original restaurant closed, but Caspers became a family-operated regional chain. The company operates its own sausage factory in San Leandro, where it produces its all-beef franks in a natural casing.

Caspers operated separately from Kasper's, which was run by Beklian's relatives and sold Chicago-style hot dogs for 95 years. That chain closed its last two locations, in Oakland and Concord, last year. In December, Berkeley-born Top Dog closed its Oakland location in the Grand Lake neighborhood.

Rustigian hopes that Booze, who he identified as a longtime customer of Caspers, has the community's support when he opens.

"We had a lot of regulars and got to see new folks all the time. We always prioritized offering them hot food at a reasonable price," he said.

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