10-03-2025
German carmaker Volkswagen's in-house sausage brand sets sales record
The core car business is weakening, but German auto giant Volkswagen (VW) was able to set a sales record in an unexpected product line in 2024: sausages.
Volkswagen's line of sausages saw 8,552,000 units sold in 2024 in canteens and supermarkets. That includes VW's packaged currywurst, a much-loved German dish of sausages slathered in curry ketchup.
That continues a steady rise in sales for the carmaker's line of mass-produced sausages. Sales in 2024 topped the previous record, only set in 2023, by more than 200,000 units, a VW spokeswoman confirmed to dpa.
The sausage sales figures were announced in an internal message to VW workers posted by the company's works council.
"With over 8 million Volkswagen Original Currywurst sausages sold, we are celebrating a new sales record," wrote VW's chief human resources officer, Gunnar Kilian, in a post on LinkedIn.
This means that the Volkswagen Group, Europe's largest carmaker, sold almost as many sausages as cars.
In contrast to booming sausages sales, vehicle sales shrank by 2.3% in 2024 to 9.03 million models across all brands, which also include marques such as Audi, SEAT and Škoda.
For the flagship VW brand, the sausages are by far the best-selling product. In 2024, the 8.5 million sausages compared to around 5.2 million cars and vans with the VW logo.
The company attributes the record to new variants such as the hot dog sausage launched in 2021, which sold almost 2.18 million units last year. The classic VW currywurst sold 6.317 million units.
VW sold about 7 million sausages in 2019 and 6.5 million in both 2020 and 2021.
Further VW sausage varieties are to follow, Kilian announced: "Our next Currywurst coup is already in the works!"
