[3] Handwerker was born in Galicia,[4][5] a former kingdom and constituent part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the partitioned Poland under the Austrian rule that roughly spanned the contemporary Poland-Ukraine border.
[4][5] Handwerker found work as a delivery boy and later obtained a job slicing bread rolls at Feltman's German Gardens, a restaurant in Coney Island, Brooklyn.
[6] By one account, Handwerker was encouraged by singing waiters Eddie Cantor and Jimmy Durante to go into business in competition with Feltman's; as United Press International noted in 1974, "There are many stories about Nathan and how the business began, but this is the way he told it..."[6] The company's official history does not mention the encouragement of those two entertainers.
[7] One story claims that to help build his savings faster, Handwerker's only meals were the hot dogs that he could eat at work for free.
[8][9] On March 23, 1974, Nathan Handwerker suffered a heart attack at his home in North Port Charlotte, Florida.