Sensible Raises $12 Million for ‘Healthier, More Sustainable, and More Humane’ Hot Dogs

Canada’s Sensible Hot Dogs has gone public on the NEO Exchange and raised nearly $12 million in non-brokered private financing for its plant-based hot dogs.

Sensible took its plant-based hot dog business public last month, launching on Canada’s NEO Exchange in late December under the ticker “HOTD.” Now the company says it has raised more than $11 million for its expansion plans.

Disrupting the hot dog market

“Sensible has attracted start-up capital to fuel its food innovation and go-to-market strategy,” Shawn Balaghi, Sensible’s CEO said in a statement. “The Company is well capitalized to launch its operations with goals to disrupt the hot dog market. We’ve taken out all the not-so-great ingredients from the hot dog that are infamously mysterious and created a healthier and tastier frank. The revolution in nutrition, taste, and reduced environmental impact starts with us,” he said.

Sensible’s hot dogs include the Classic and a Cheesy version both made from ingredients including mushrooms, bean protein, wheat protein, and root vegetables. 

Balaghi called last month’s launch on the NEO Exchange a significant milestone for Sensible, specifically as the company looks to leverage the capital markets to fuel its growth. “After thoroughly reviewing all of the potential options to list in Canada, we are convinced that listing on the NEO Exchange, a senior stock exchange, best raises our profile among retail and institutional investors and provides a platform from which to expand our shareholder base as we execute our growth and value creation plans,” Balaghi said.

Sensible is fueling its growth to target the increasing demand for hot dogs. According to The National Hot Dog and Sausage Council, Americans consume about 20 billion hot dogs every year, with 95 percent of Americans eating about 70 hot dogs per year.

Data from market analysis firm Statista found that more than 255 million hot dogs were consumed in 2020 and an estimated 261 million will be consumed in 2024 — just in the U.S.

That brings the market value to nearly $600 million in 2022 — a 20 percent YoY increase. Globally, the hot dog market is expected to reach nearly $2 billion by 2032. Plant-based hot dogs are seeing sales increases, too; the vegan meat market sector is expected to grow to $15.7 billion by 2027, up from $7.9 billion last year.

“The current meat, dairy, egg, and seafood industries from source to sale cause tremendous suffering, are highly unsustainable, and contribute to a wide range of lifestyle diseases. Sensible aims at a healthier, more sustainable, and more humane food option for consumers,” said Balaghi.

Processed meat

Conventional hot dogs have another problem, too. They aren’t healthy. Recent research found processed meats such as hot dogs can reduce life span by nearly 40 minutes. Those findings, published in 2021 in the journal Nature Food, were based on an index designed to calculate the net benefits or detriments of food. It was modeled after a study called the Global Burden of Disease, which looked at the morbidity associated with certain foods.

“For example, 0.45 minutes are lost per gram of processed meat, or 0.1 minutes are gained per gram of fruit. We then look at the composition of each food and then multiplied this number by the corresponding food profiles that we previously developed,” Olivier Jolliet, professor of environmental health sciences at the University of Michigan and senior author of the paper, told CNN in 2021.

“The index is primarily there to help aid in selecting and using calories consumed on a daily basis to tweak a minimum of habits and make the minimum of change to obtain a maximum benefit for health and the environment from our food experience,” he said.

Vegan processed food comes with consequences, too, according to another 2021 study. But the benefits of avoiding animal meat continue to be significant, the research found. It split subjects into four groups, and the group with the higher avoidance of animal-based food in their diet saw the greatest nutritional quality.