In recent years, Volkswagen’s financial woes may have become emblematic of Germany’s economic downturn. But, amid a slump in car sales, one of its more obscure products that has nothing to do with automobiles is experiencing a boom: the VW currywurst.
Described as the fuel of the carmaker’s own factory workers and served up daily in its numerous works canteens and nearby supermarkets, the snack has officially become the company’s most popular product.
“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.
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 8.5m of their own brand last year, a rise of 200,000 on 2023, a company spokesperson said.
VW, long one of the most iconic brands in an economy that for decades was Europe’s powerhouse but which has contracted for the past two years, has had little else to celebrate this week.
The company’s annual report, released on Tuesday, showed net profit down 30.6% compared with the previous year owing to high production costs and decreased sales in China.
The 10-brand group, whose models include Audi, Seat and Skoda alongside VW, had a challenging 2024, marked by a long and bitter dispute with German unions that ended with a deal in December to cut 35,000 jobs by 2030.
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%”.
But VW also acknowledged that challenges remained “arising from an environment characterised by political uncertainty, increasing trade restrictions and geopolitical tensions”. This includes a lack of clarity over Donald Trump’s threat to impose 25% tariffs on manufacturers in the EU.
Away from the global turbulence, however, the company can rely on its sausages.
The VW currywurst – which is available in the company’s 30 canteens and work site kiosks as well as local supermarkets near 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.
In 2021, VW bosses’ decision to strike the currywurst off the menu at the company’s headquarters in Wolfsburg, northern Germany, led to an outcry among workers.
It also provoked the ire of the former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, one of the dish’s most famous fans and a former leader of the state of Lower Saxony where VW is based.
He waded into the row, calling currywurst the “power bar of the skilled factory worker”. It was reinstated, with apologies, from company managers, who had said they had been responding to employees’ increasing calls for healthy vegetarian and vegan options.