Volkswagen Sausage and the Enduring Appeal of Culinary Car-Industry Crossovers
21 comments
·January 17, 2025lqet
bell-cot
I don't know details of the history...but in late 1930's Germany, signalling "we will feed you" might have been critical for attracting workers. Food insecurity had been pretty dire in Germany over much of the prior two decades.
mschuster91
> Food insecurity had been pretty dire in Germany over much of the prior two decades.
Not-so-fun fact: this is what worries me the most about the current political tendencies across the Western world. Historically, food insecurity has been the most common factor between regime changes, revolutions and other uprisings - and now we have been through about five years of rampant inflation (either direct or "hidden" behind shrink/skimpflation) with wage raises not even coming close to matching it, and many even centrist politicians don't care.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF
I wouldn't mind a re-roll on the upcoming American regime. Raise taxes on the wealthy and beef up programs that help the poor. Nobody should be rich enough to buy elections
numpad0
Isn't that also tale old as time? The word salary is believed to have come from either rationed salt or compensation for salt purchases issued to Roman soldiers, and free lunches were always present in every IT worker's dream office during 2000s-2010s.
bell-cot
Old as time? Roughly, though the intensity of the insecurity has varied greatly with period / location / social circumstances.
Opinions may vary on the IT workers' free meal benefits. My impression is that the richest firms added breakfast, and dinner, and laundry service - and were sometimes accused of hoping that employees would live in the office and work 20 hours a day.
FWIW, Wiktionary expresses doubt on that origin for "salary" - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/salary Vague memory: It's a topic that an ancient historian could lecture on for a few hours...and still conclude "doubtful".
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pentamassiv
Interestingly they do not own the recipe for the Volkswagen ketchup and there was a big outrage amongst workers a few years ago when they changed suppliers and the ketchup tasted differently
[0] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/currywurst-neuer-ketc...
kiney
I live near Wolfsburg and the Volkswagen Currywurst is readily available in some supermarkets around here. It's hands down the best Currywurst you can get. And it is really being produced by Volkswagen - in contrast to their also kinda famous ketchup which is nowadays produces by develey and just branded VW.
Also the article is a bit imprecise on the part of swapping it for a vegan alternative in the headquarters: that was only one of several canteens in the headquarters (Volkswagen Markenhaus).
ttepasse
The imprecision is something what I start to call the foreign-correspondent-culture-war-pipeline: Something happens in a country. Because of misunderstandings it becomes a minor topic in public discussion for two days or so. A foreign correspondent starts to write about, because it touches on a culture war topic in their own country. But because any foreign journalism have limited space for context and culture the article has a slightly distorted and abbreviated view. Because a lot of people a monolinguists and of course have little time, that English article becomes the authoritative source for the Anglosphere.
I somewhat did like the VW Currywurst the one time I was in Wolfsburg/Autostadt. But it was different from home - the Ruhr area. Sometimes we forget that even something simple as the Currywurst has regional differences. And then there is Berlin.
julianeon
I live in San Francisco and, whenever I'm in the area of Glen Canyon Market, I make sure to pick up several Fiat chocolates there: they cost about a dollar a piece and are delicious. I had no idea they were related to the car company; I thought the name overlap was a coincidence. They are really really good, like drive 10 minutes out of your way to get some good. Especially the green ones.
ukoki
I've eaten this sausage in the (a?) Wolfsburg factory cafeteria -- it's a pretty good sausage! I remember the VW devs I was working with telling me it was the "most-manufactured" part VW produces
throeurir
There is a boom of luxury car-branded buildings (Mercedes-Benz Dubai..).
Branding is one of a few valuable assets those car companies have left.
> This was Volkswagen’s very own currywurst, with 30 employees turning out 18,000 sausages a day.
Historically, this has simply been a necessity for Volkswagen. The Volkswagen factory was build in the 30ies in a thinly populated area that was mainly chosen because it was next to the Mittelland canal. An entire city (Wolfsburg) was founded for the workers. The city's entire infrastructure had to be built from scratch [0], and of course this included farms and meat processing plants.
[0] https://img.sparknews.funkemedien.de/214521413/214521413_152...