Caught at the most daunting crossroads in its history, fallen German carmaking giant Volkswagen can take solace in one segment of its business empire that continues to boom: sausages.
Volkswagen’s 2024 earnings, released on Tuesday, revealed a 3% decline in vehicle sales alongside a 30% drop in net profits. The carmaker’s rising costs and falling demand prompted the group to agree to up to 35,000 job cuts by 2030 and German factory closures in a bid to turn around its fortunes.
Volkswagen-branded currywurst, however, is showing no signs of a similar downturn.
The VW Currywurst, affectionately designated the component number 199 398 500 A, has been serving the company’s employees and locals around its Wolfsburg headquarters since 1973.
Made in-house by a Volkswagen-employed butcher, the currywurst feeds the company’s tens of thousands of employees across its German plants. It can also be found at the Wolfsburg football stadium and in supermarkets around Germany.
The IG Metall union, which represents Volkswagen’s German workers, confirmed that Volkswagen had sold 8.552 million portions of its currywurst last year.
That’s only slightly lower than the 9 million cars the entire Volkswagen group sold last year. The currywurst sales already dwarf those of the Volkswagen brand itself, which stood at 5.2 million vehicles last year.
The company sold 6.3 million of its original currywurst in 2024, of which one in ten were consumed by the company’s workers. Another 2.2 million were sold as a hot dog version of the currywurst via retail.
The group also managed to sell 42,000 units of a vegan version of its beloved sausages.
“Volkswagen stands for innovation – on two, four and many other wheels and yes – also on the plate!” Volkswagen HR director Gunnar Kilian posted on LinkedIn on Monday.
“With over 8 million Volkswagen Genuine Curry sausages sold, we are celebrating a new sales record. But we are not resting on our laurels: Our next currywurst coup is already in the works!”
The IG Metall Union, which sparred with Volkswagen for months last year to find a way out of the carmaker’s decline, made a point of highlighting the humble sausage’s growing significance compared with its vehicles.
“For years now, Volkswagen has sold more currywursts than vehicles bearing the VW logo—although such a comparison is, of course, a matter of taste.
“One thing is certain, however: With the current 8.6 million units, VW’s currywurst sales are not only once again outpacing the core passenger car brand’s sales (2024: 4.8 million units), but are also moving closer to the cross-brand vehicle sales of the entire Group.”
The group’s head of food production promised more innovations to the VW Currywurst, including a ready-to-eat version that comes complete with another Volkswagen product, the part number 00010 ZDK-259-101, known by its more common name: ketchup.
Volkswagen sold some 629,000 bottles of its VW spiced ketchup last year, in addition to 25,000 10-liter buckets. The company for the first time distributed its ketchup to customers in the U.S. last year, with the free-of-charge Gewürz Ketchup Brand flying off the carmaker’s shelves.