"Papaya King has a great brand," said Daniel Horan, chief executive of PK Operations Inc., an entrepreneurial subsidiary of the Manhattan venture capital firm Founders Equity that plans to hazard millions of dollars over the next few years to populate New York, and then the world, with Papaya Kings. "It has a great reputation and a great logo," he said, referring to the wild yellow, red and green depiction of a smiling papaya face topped with a crown.

Mr. Horan and his investors hope that the very Noo Yawk pairing of hot dogs with papaya and other tropical fruit drinks is as nationally marketable as other mysteriously successful culinary relationships, like pastrami and rye or peanut butter and jelly.

Even though there are now just two stores ¾ the 125th Street prototype and the flagship store at 86th Street and Third Avenue ¾ Papaya King has a "national reputation," according to Mr. Horan, 32, who holds an M.B.A. from Yale and worked as a manager at Gourmet Garage, the high-end Manhattan grocer.

Though six decades of operation, Papaya King has waxed and waned desultorily, at times establishing satellite stores in Manhattan, far-flung Brooklyn and even farther-flung Los Angeles. The company found them cumbersome to manage and less profitable than anticipated; ultimately, they all were discontinued when their leases ran out.

One store set up in 1973 on Manhattan's Upper West Side was bought by its managers and renamed Gray's Papaya; it is not associated with Papaya King. A number of imitators sprang up around the city, but for years until this month, the flagship Papaya King store stood alone.

Through the years, "we've been approached by countless people who wanted to take us national," said Peter Poulos, the chief executive of the original Papaya King store.

Mr. Poulos, 61, who joined the family business in 1958, received an undisclosed fee from Founders Equity for the rights to use the Papaya King name and has been given a 12 percent stake in PK Operations. As part of the deal he and several experienced workers and managers came over form the 86th Street operation to help get the new store going.

The 1,200-square-foot prototype, which cost more than $300,000 to build, showcases its stand-up fare with green and orange neon and a galaxy of homely signs that, as in the original store, extol the store's "Tastier Than Filet Mignon Frankfurters" for which "NO ONE, and we mean NO ONE, has our formula!"

Papaya King's $1.29 frankfurters have been lauded by Julia Child and Bryan Miller, and Zagat's Restaurant Survey calls them "the crown jewels of hot doggery."

The hickory-smoked hot dogs are made of beef seasoned with garlic, oregano and "South American spices," Mr. Poulos said enigmatically. Casing imported from Germany are used "because that gives them a snap when people bite," he said.

New York was once populated by chains like Nedick's and Orange Julius that hawked the twin attractions of frankfurters and fruit drinks in dozens of locations. In 1932, Constantine Poulos, Peter's father, immigrated from Greece and opened a juice store in Manhattan; seven years later, he and his wife, Birdie, hit on the idea of serving frankfurters with papaya, and Papaya King was born. Now there is even a Web site: www.papayaking.com.

Today a McDonald's and a Burger King are across form the new store at 121 West 125th Street, near Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard.

But "Papaya King is its own subniche of fast food ¾ tropical juices in combination with a frank product that is of a very high quality," said Malcolm M. Knapp, an consultant based in New York. Mr. Knapp also happens to be a Manhattan hot-dog aficionado and Papaya King regular who lives near the 86th street neighborhood.

Harlem is a good choice for expansion, "since it is not terribly well served by others with a quality product," he said.

The president of the 125th Street Business Improvement District, Barbara Askins, agreed. "You can find lots of Chicken and burgers in Harlem, but not many hot dogs," she said as she waited her turn in line.

In theory, the notion of a chain of Papaya Kings is promising, Mr. Knapp said, "because the basic economic model is very strong on a unit level," meaning that individual stores could be highly profitable. The chain operates efficiently thanks to its "limited menu, which means they can deliver product more quickly," he said.

The 86th Street store sells 2,000 frankfurters a day and has annual revenues of more than $1 million. Mr. Knapp calculated that the store's sales per square foot, an important industry indicator, could be $1,300 or more, "extraordinarily good for a store that size," he said.

The business plan, Mr. Poulos said, is to perfect the operation and design of the prototype, then open four to five more company-owned stores in Manhattan before branching out to other state, possibly as a franchiser.

But there are many hurdles. The city's robust economy may make it difficult to find suitable new locations with affordable commercial rent, Mr. Knapp said. And the stores compete not only with the giant faster food chains but also with what Mr. Poulos contends are low-quality "copycats," about a dozen of them, scattered around Manhattan. Papaya King has sued some of the imitators to keep them from to closely imitating the store's name and distinctive logo.

In the end, "It's much easier to build these things then to run them," Mr. Knapp said.

"The rule of thumb in these operations is that most owners can handle up to about six units that are reasonably geographically close, before they blow up. It takes a different kind of management to run a larger business."

For his part, Mr. Horan says no one, no one, is more prepared than he to launch a king-sized network of Papaya Kings.