LIGJET E BIZNESIT
The automotive market is in a critical situation, with sales having dropped significantly, and the German company Volkswagen closed the year 2024 with a 30% decline in net profit. However, the company has achieved remarkable results with a typically German product that has little connection to vehicles: sausages, particularly the “currywurst” variety, which have become popular across Germany and also internationally, partly due to promotion by former Chancellor Schröder.
Sausages are included in Volkswagen’s product catalog, and last year, so many units were sold that they almost reached the number of vehicles sold, with 8.5 million sausages sold in restaurants and supermarkets in Lower Saxony.
In practice, so many sausages were sold that they equaled vehicle sales. However, unlike vehicle sales, which fell by 2.3% in 2024, reaching 9.03 million models across all Volkswagen Group brands, the opportunity to buy sausages at Volkswagen has been available at its headquarters in Wolfsburg since 1973.
According to some industry specialists, the success of these sales is related to the wide variety of sausages introduced in their catalog, such as the hot dog format, reaching a total of 2.18 million sold.
However, the traditional “currywurst” sausage sold 6.317 million. This increase in the company’s sausage sales began several years ago, with sales reaching seven million in 2019, and during the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, they reached 6.5 million. Nevertheless, the trend suggests that these sales will continue to rise, with an even higher number of sausages sold. Furthermore, according to the communication director of the Volkswagen Group.
In 2021, it made headlines when Volkswagen decided to remove the currywurst from the menu of one of the company’s 30 restaurants, the one serving employees at its headquarters, and it would operate without meat, becoming primarily a vegetarian and vegan restaurant.
In this regard, former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder took advantage of the situation to draw attention by promoting the hashtag #RettetDieCurrywurst (“Save the Currywurst”) on social media. Furthermore, the former leader wanted to express support for the company’s employees, stating on LinkedIn: “Currywurst with fries is one of the energizing meals for skilled workers.”
This caused widespread protests from employees, and eventually, in 2023, the German company decided to lift the ban and reintroduce meat to its restaurants. Thus, thanks to the return of these sausages to Volkswagen’s restaurants and their popularity among Germans, the company has managed to cover some aspects of the ongoing automotive crisis it is facing.
