Grabbing a hot dog at the turn—a tradition as ingrained in golf as shaking hands on the 18th green—might be going the way of the 1-iron.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if hot dogs are something you see a lot, lot less of on golf courses in the next five years,” Spencer Potter, founder of ClubGrub said, attributing the sea change to golfers making healthier choices and also simply craving more variety.

ClubGrub, a food and beverage app currently used at 87 golf courses across the U.S., analyzed 27,000 orders and found that hot dogs—a longtime course staple—accounted for less than 5% of all orders. The app, which functions like a golf-specific DoorDash, lets players pre-order food for pickup at the turn or have it delivered straight to their cart.

Before cooking up ClubGrub, Potter was spinning tracks as a successful party DJ in the New York Metropolitan area. He drew dozens of headlines for selling his 867-5309 phone number—made famous by Tommy Tutone’s 1980’s anthem about those digits scrawled on a wall, along with his initial business, A Blast Entertainment—for $186,853.09 on eBay. After relocating from Weehawken to White Plains, he launched Turntable Events which he recently exited— though he still DJs occasionally as a creative escape from the demands of tech startup life.

Potter’s career behind the turntables finetuned his ability to read crowds, adapt on the fly and deliver memorable experiences—skills that would come in handy when rethinking the on-course golf dining experience.

The impetus to pivot from keeping the dancefloors at Westchester weddings hopping, to streamlining golfers’ ability to chow down on demand can be traced back to a sub-par culinary experience chowing down on a lousy glizzy.

“I got served a really rubbery hot dog on a stale bun at the turn one day. I thought ‘this is disgusting, somebody’s got to fix this.’ It doesn’t matter if you’re playing an elite private club or a local muni course, the problem is universal across the board.”

The idea of facilitating made-to-order fresh course nosh in a frictionless manner would marinate in Potter’s head for a decade before technology caught up to his aspirations, prompting him to hang up the beat of the entertainment world to address a pain point in the golf club on-course dining experience he describes as ‘Medieval.’

“The ordering process is either waiting for a beverage cart to hopefully find you with some limited menu of snacks and a couple domestic beers or scrambling into the halfway house at the turn and trying not to hold up the group behind you and having to settle for a hot dog because it’s quick serve,” Potter said, adding that it’s also a missed opportunity for operators to extend the reach and revenue of their onsite restaurants. Even for courses whose F&B programs consisted of a humble snackbar, hotdog demand clocked in low.

“Golfers just want more variety. They are not as in love with the hot dog as the industry seems to think they are and that was the proof in the pudding for us—people really aren’t ordering hot dogs at all,” Potter commented. “They’d rather have a fresh chicken sandwich or even a premium burger and that is increasing ticket averages as well.”

The main takeaway is that on-course golf menus are ripe for expansion, and Potter believes they’ll mirror the trajectory we’ve seen at major league ballparks—where in the last decade handheld fare has gone well beyond the pretzels and dogs of yesteryear to include Dungeness crab sandos, Korean fried chicken and fish tacos.

Aside from the hot dogs’ limited popularity, another insightful nugget gleaned from ClubGrub’s deep dive into their partner data, is that number 3, 5 and 13 were the most popular holes to order food on and also that golfers’ sipping predilections are evolving.

“Some people want clubhouse caliber beverages and premium cocktails on the course, things not typically on a beverage cart like a really good craft beer or a bottle of wine and margaritas are starting to trend.”

ClubGrub’s GPS locator, that shares customers’ live location for the facilitation of a direct delivery, is the differentiator that separates them from competitors in the ecosystem.

“If you order on the third hole but it’s not ready till you’re on the fifth green, the club will know exactly where you at and be able to shoot right out and drop it off to you.” The app is also used on the driving range, putting green and in the case of golf communities, houses in the immediate neighborhood.

The vast majority of ClubGrub’s partners have called an audible on the traditional sales method of circling golf courses, sidling up to groups of players in beverage carts to hawk drinks and snacks and actually chosen to eliminate the mobile merchandising vehicles from their fleet.

“They don’t need that big clunky thing anymore and essentially just use order runners from the clubhouse to wherever the golfers are or whatever part of the property where they want to serve,” Potter explained, ballparking the number that choose to pivot to solely direct orders at 90-95% of their client base.

Reticence from club owners when pitched on ClubGrub is often rooted in resistance to change what they feel is already working, combined with the hassles inherent with adopting yet another new service.

Tyler Brennan, a tech savvy operator and turnaround artist whose club portfolio includes Salem Glen and Smithfields Country Club in South Carolina, uses software like Lightspeed and Tagmarshal to streamline operations at his courses.

“I can say that if it doesn’t integrate with my existing kitchen software, I’m definitely not going to even bother entertaining it because it’s one more system to maintain, one more spot for employees to miss orders and so on,” Brennan said when asked for his initial impression of ClubGrub.

It’s the type of pushback Potter hears often but can often be alleviated once operators learn that ClubGrub is POS agnostic and can be popped into any existing point-of-sale system in under an hour.

“We literally give them an iPad, it automates the whole process and they manage the orders that come in.”

Another challenge he encounters is clubs that stock a self-serve grab-and-go hospitality station where staff estimate demand. To avoid running out, they often overstock—an approach that, while safer, leads to excess inventory and food waste, costing clubs tens of thousands of dollars annually.

“It’s the same for beverage carts. They’re very expensive and it’s even more expensive to build a snack bar out in the middle of the course. That could run over a million dollars and all of that can be eliminated and they can offer a better service with better menu options which is a win-win for everyone,” Potter claimed.

Momentum is steadily building for ClubGrub, which expects its club partner count to double by year end 2025. Concert Golf Partners, with 35 clubs under their umbrella, is one of their largest accounts, and they are currently in late-stage talks with an even bigger multi-course operator to pilot their solution.