 As of 2016, Nathan's operates over 400 company owned and franchised restaurants in all 50 states and 17 foreign countries, and Nathan's brand products are found in some 45,000 stores across the United States.Handwerker was born in Galicia, 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.One of 13 children of a poor Jewish shoemaker, he immigrated to the United States in 1912.