Hot Damn! Whatever Happened to Hot Sam?
By Michael Jones | July 3, 2021
It’s like the old saying goes: the only things certain in life are death, taxes, and how the indulgent scent of a hot pretzel can make anyone’s mouth water. Oh sure, sex is great, but have you ever had a soft pretzel?
And sure enough there was no soft pretzel like a Hot Sam soft pretzel. Today you can visit an Auntie Anne’s, a Wetzel’s Pretzel, a Philly Pretzel Factory, or a Pretzelmaker. You’ll get a decent pretzel and that sweet, buttery smell that envelops you and adds at least 5 pounds to your hips.
But Hot Sam is the OG—the pretzel company that ran so that these newer brands could fly. The first store was at the Livonia Mall in Michigan (one of the first indoor shopping malls in the state) in 1967, occupying real estate alongside latter-half 20th century mall staples like Children’s Palace, Sears, and General Cinema.
What made Hot Sam so good? Was it the recipe? It was no hot secret the pretzels were factory pre-made, flash-frozen, and shipped to all their stores. But the stores themselves “baked” the pretzels in ovens that had rotating drums and took around 16 minutes to properly make a pretzel. Can you imagine anyone waiting 16 minutes for a soft pretzel today? People would be rage tweeting their first world inconvenience left and right!
Or maybe it was Hot Sam’s orange-red brick interior that kind of made it feel like you were stepping into a 1970s kitchen. Whether you had an actual walk-in store or just a small little booth, the color scheme screamed “I’m a counter top in 1974!”
But I like to think Hot Sam just hit at the right time and place, like all good and magical things. Call it a pretzel twist of fate.
Soft pretzels were once the denizen of street vendors only. But as America’s love of shopping malls exploded from the 1960s - 1980s, soft pretzels went from carts on the streets to kiosks and storefronts in almost every indoor mall in America. And Hot Sam led the way.
Why were they so popular? Well, as the LA Times reported in 1985 when Hot Sam spread from its Midwest roots to conquer California, soft pretzels just made more sense as a snack for heaps of mall shoppers running around in their L.A. Gear sneakers from store to store.
“They’re finding that the pretzel fills them up without slowing them down when they’re shopping,” said Deborah Price, who in 1985 managed the Hot Sam store in the Mission Viejo mall.
Prior to the mall food court explosion in the late 80s / early 90s that saw basically every mall adopt a Sbarro, a Chinese food place (already tempted to go get honey bourbon chicken after this article publishes), or a Taco Bell, food at the mall was kind of an afterthought. Oh sure there was possibly a McDonald’s, but most malls maybe had 3-5 restaurants tops. York Steakhouse? Hot Dog on a Stick? Or perhaps a department store that had an actual diner in it? (For my hometown mall it was a Kaufmann’s, RIP, and I remember they had the best orange sherbet at their department store restaurant called Tic Toc.)
Hot Sam filled that food void of quick snacks that made a whole entire wing of most malls smell like salty heaven. But as fast as Hot Sam took over the nation’s shopping mall scene, they left the American consciousness almost as quickly.
In 1985 there were over 175 Hot Sam stores around the country, raking in $30-$50 million. Ten years later the chain would be sold to Mrs. Fields, and mostly deprioritized in favor of another pretzel chain purchased by the queen of cookies—Pretzel Time.
By 2005 there would only be 10 total Hot Sam locations still around in the States. But even those wouldn’t make it to 2006, as Mrs. Fields converted them to Pretzel Times (which were subsequently converted to Pretzelmakers).
Talk about a salty end to a booming soft pretzel era.
Stranger Things 3 includes a blink and you’ll miss it cameo by a Hot Sam store in The Starcourt Mall.
Every now and again, Hot Sam reemerges via some random pop culture reference, like in Season 3 of Stranger Things where a 1980s mall proves to be a pivotal plot location. (We’re not only treated to a Hot Sam replica in this season of Stranger Things, but there’s a Chess King, a Jazzercise, and even a Wicks ’N Sticks—where in the 1980s you could buy “money candles,” candles that would burn and burn until they melted all the way down and would reveal either a $1 bill or, if you were lucky, a $20 bill.)
Rest assured that Hot Sam belongs up there with the Blockbusters, Kinney Shoes, Borders, Tower Records, Gadzooks and other loved brands of the second half of the 20th century who have disappeared.
Did Hot Sam invent the soft pretzel? No, most certainly not. But did they help make the soft pretzel a national phenomenon, inspire pizza pretzels and pretzels dipped in chocolate or strawberry sauce or nacho cheese? They certainly did, probably as good as or more than any other brand. And that makes them a Pop Trash Museum delicacy.
An unabashed 80s & 90s pop culture junkie, Michael Jones is a Brooklyn-based writer and co-host of the Pop Trash Podcast.