[Image: Volkswagen Group / Facebook]
The Amarok might be a bestseller in Pretoria, but at the Volkswagen factory, the VW Currywurst was a surprise bestseller last year.
Described as “the fuel of the carmaker’s own factory workers” and served up daily in its numerous works canteens and nearby supermarkets, the sausage has officially become the company’s most popular product for 2024.
Currywurst – sliced sausage slathered in tomato sauce and sprinkled with curry powder and sometimes paprika – is one of Germany’s favourite dishes. The car manufacturer sold 8.5 million of these worsies last year, a rise of 200,000 from 2023, according to a company spokesperson.
“More than 8 million Volkswagen original currywursts marks a new sales record for us,” VW’s chief human resources officer, Gunnar Kilian, said on social media this week.
It’s good that VW can fall back on the sausage as their car sales are not doing so well.
Net profit is down 30.6% compared with the previous year, owing to high production costs and decreased sales in China. On Tuesday, the company’s finance chief, Arno Antlitz, said that “consistently reducing costs and increasing profitability was VW’s goal” and that the company expected revenue this year to exceed the 2024 figure by “up to 5%”.
Also, push those sausages!
The VW currywurst, which is available in the company’s 30 canteens and work kiosks as well as local supermarkets close to its factories, is prepared according to a secret recipe known only to a handful of employees.
Introduced in 1973, it is produced by the company’s own on-site butchers in its so-called service factory, considered so important to the running of the business it is branded as a Volkswagen Originalteil – an original part – and boasts its own parts number: 199 398 500 A.
According to The Guardian, VW bosses tried to remove the snack from canteen menus in 2021, but the workers kicked up a huge fuss that eventually led to former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, a fan of the currywurst, stepping in to insist the workers had a right to their wors.
After calling currywurst the “power bar of the skilled factory worker”, it was reinstated, with apologies from the company.
Don’t touch a German on his wurst.
[Source: Guardian]
