Gray’s Papaya founder Nicholas Gray dies after half

The original Gray's Papaya location on 72nd Street and Broadway, founded by Nicholas Gray in 1973, is the company's sole remaining store.

Nicholas Gray, who 50 years ago founded the hot dog chain Gray's Papaya that has expanded and shrunk its footprint across Manhattan in the ensuing decades, has died, the company announced on Instagram.

Gray was 86 years old upon his death last Friday, attributed to complications from Alzheimer's disease, his daughter told The New York Times.

Along with competitors like Papaya King and Papaya Dog, Gray's Papaya helped popularize the strange, only-in-New-York combination of hot dogs and fruit juice.

Indeed, Gray himself initially opened his shop on 72nd Street and Broadway as an outpost of Papaya King before being released from his franchise contract two years later and rechristening it with his own surname, The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year. At the time, his hot dogs cost 50 cents, and Gray was selling as many as 3,000 a week, his wife, Rachael, told the newspaper.

At various points, Gray's Papaya had locations in Greenwich Village, Hell's Kitchen and across from the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Crain's reported on that last location's opening in 2016, describing Gray as having preferred a corner location with heavy foot traffic before settling for a midblock storefront.

Although its 20-year lease seemed to guarantee a long tenure on Eighth Avenue, the store shuttered within years, much like Gray's downtown shops, leaving only the original Upper West Side flagship that remains today.

The Broadway flagship shut its doors temporarily at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, in what the local blog West Side Rag described as its first closure in 47 years. But Gray's returned by May, with a new version of the "Recession Special" that the shop pioneered in the 1980s. (The most recent version included two hot dogs and a drink for $6.95, tax included.)

Passersby have had a hard time missing the flashy, red-lettered signs that have long adorned Gray's Upper West Side store, ranging from Gray's political endorsements (such as Barack Obama in 2008), to complaints about rising inflation ("Please don't hate us," read a 2011 sign that warned the shop would need to raise the price of its hot dogs past $1.50).

These days a single frank costs $2.95.

Gray, an immigrant from Chile who worked as a stockbroker before entering the restaurant world, was remembered by his company as "the sweetest, funniest, most eccentric boss, father, husband and brother."

"Thank you for the countless lives you brightened one recession special at a time," reads the company's post.