BANGOR – For more than a century, it was a dog-eat-dog world for W.A. Bean and C.H. Rice when it came to frankfurters.

The competition was so intense the two local hot-dog producers would conduct blind taste-tests to see whether Bangor area consumers could tell the difference between the brands. If their hot dog lost, Bean or Rice would just spice it up and continue to fight for market share.

Now the foes are friends. Pass the mustard, please.

W.A. Bean & Sons is linking up to produce Rice’s Frankforts after a summer-long absence because of a brand-name cut by Tyson Foods, which bought the hot-dog line a year ago. After months of negotiating contracts, testing recipes and signing vendors, production is under way at W.A. Bean’s Bangor facility in the hopes of making 1.2 million pounds of Rice’s Frankforts a year.

That’s about 12 million hot dogs.

The W.A. Bean plant will be expanded and 15 jobs will be added to its staff of 10 people, according to owner Frank Bean.

“We think it’s going to be a lot of fun plus a lot of work,” said Fred Rice, whose family began making Rice’s Frankforts in 1882, more than 20 years after W.A. Bean started selling its brand.

The Rice family has not been producing hot dogs for almost four decades. In the 1960s, the family business was sold to Jordan’s Meats, which continued the Rice’s Frankforts line. Fred Rice worked with Jordan’s until his retirement six years ago.

In 2001 Iowa Beef Co., the parent of Foodbrands America, purchased Jordan’s. Last year, Iowa Beef Co. was bought by Tyson Foods. The Maine production facility in Augusta was shut down earlier this year after Tyson decided it had too many hot-dog and other meat selections.

That’s when Rice said he started to get telephone calls from angry customers who wanted the red natural-casing hot dogs that “snap when you bite them.” Even area supermarket chains sent letters to Tyson headquarters demanding answers about why the regionwide favorite was being discontinued.

“For a big company they decided it was too much,” said Frank Bean, owner of W.A. Bean, of Tyson’s decision to stop Rice’s Frankforts. “They wanted one or two labels instead of five or six.”

Added Rice, “I think they bit off more than they could chew, pardon the pun, frankly speaking.”

As a matter of good faith, Tyson was willing to sell the Rice family its namesake under two conditions: that the brand doesn’t compete too much with Tyson’s lines and that the family secure an acceptable company to make the frankfurters.

With family pride on the line, Rice began negotiations in early summer to buy back the Rice’s Frankforts name from Tyson. He also started talks with W.A. Bean about creating a partnership. W.A. Bean will produce, market, sell and distribute the hot dogs and Rice will receive a royalty for every pound sold.

“Fred did not like having his family name – Rice’s hot dogs – out of the marketplace,” Bean said.

“They were happy there was a Rice family member left to buy the brand back,” said Rice about the talks with Tyson.

Terms of the Tyson deal are confidential, Rice said.

Consumers may notice a difference in taste for a while, he said. Because of the brand’s numerous changes of ownership, the recipe was altered several times. Bean said Rice found the original family recipe and taste-tests were conducted during the summer to make sure the formula was just right before production began.

For more than 140 years, W.A. Bean has been a regional wholesaler of meats to grocery stores and restaurants. It also operates a retail store at its Bomarc Industrial Park facility off Burleigh Road. Rice’s Frankforts are being sold there and will reach area supermarkets within a week.

It still makes its own brand of red-colored natural-casing hot dogs – about 250,000 pounds each year – and will not stop now that it’s producing Rice’s Frankforts, too. The brands feature different blends of meats and spices.

“There always was a demand for our hot dogs even when Rice’s was out in the market,” Bean said.

Both Bean’s and Rice’s hot dogs will stay in the familiar dye-induced red color – natural coloring is available, too. As for why the hot dogs are red, both Rice and Bean aren’t sure.

Even Bean’s father and uncle, both of whom are about 80 years old and worked in the family business, “are not exactly sure why.” They believe that German sausage makers who came to the United States in the late 1800s brought the red-color concept with them, but Bean said he isn’t certain about that.

“That’s the way I understand it anyway,” he said.