Volkswagen has launched a brand new model of its best-selling product and it has the potential to dramatically improve revenues and profitability – however it’s nothing to do with vehicles.
In a twist that may make even essentially the most seasoned automotive analyst do a double-take, one of many agency’s most necessary product traces isn’t a car, or perhaps a car element, however a conventional kind of German sausage.
The world’s second-largest automotive maker can be a heavyweight within the processed meat enterprise, and its famed Volkswagen currywurst is now heading for the prepared meal aisle in supermarkets.
First grilled into existence in 1973 on the firm’s personal butchery in Wolfsburg, the sausage was initially supposed for inside use solely, fuelling employees in Volkswagen’s canteens, however it quickly escaped the manufacturing unit gates and rapidly attained cult standing among the many German public.
In 2024 alone, Volkswagen offered shut to eight.6 million currywursts, comfortably eclipsing the 5.2m Volkswagen-branded vehicles and industrial automobiles it delivered globally. Even counting all Volkswagen Group manufacturers mixed (9.03m), currywurst runs an in depth second.
From June 2025, it’s getting the complete prepared meal grocery store therapy, with a microwave-ready model launching at retailers equivalent to Edeka and Netto in northern and jap Germany. A nationwide rollout is reportedly within the works.
Whereas microwave currywurst trays have been accessible because the early 2000s, Volkswagen’s model has a factory-fresh twist: no sachet of curry powder for the tomato sauce, which Dietmar Schulz, head of Volkswagen’s in-house meat division, says is as a result of “there’s already sufficient curry in there – within the sausage and within the sauce”.
