Volkswagen Is Giving Americans Free Curry Ketchup So They Can Make Their Own Currywurst

An often perplexing part of car enthusiasm is the litany of automaker-branded merch available. Sure, Porsche and Ferrari are quite good at this, but mainstream brands are in on the game too. However, while shirts and hats are common, Volkswagen is doing something different by bringing its Gewürz ketchup to America.

Obviously, you wouldn’t wear Gewürz ketchup on purpose, and the bottle’s just too damn big to use it as a keychain. It seems like a puzzling choice on the face of things, but American Volkswagen fans have been screaming for this sauce for years.

Gewürz ketchup is a hugely important thing for Volkswagen, although you probably couldn’t tell from the description on the product listing. Here are the bullet points, directly from Volkswagen’s website, and they make it feel like the spirit of Driver’s Wanted-era Volkswagen is still alive somewhere inside headquarters.

– Glass bottle with condiment inside.
– Not made with metal, carbon fiber, leather, or rubber. But it’s got tomatoes in it.
– A VW part from the German Katalog you can eat. VW does not advise you eat other katalog parts.
– Cars sold separately.

Cute, but not massively descriptive considering the label on the bottle calls this stuff a “spiced tomato condiment.” So, where do you use a spice tomato condiment? Well, it’s for one of Germany’s only contributions to the world of fast food — currywurst.

The story — as reported by British newspaper the Independent — goes that in 1949, Berlin-based Herta Heuwer went down to a British Armed Forces NAAFI grocer, picked up ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, and curry powder, mixed it all together, and poured it over pork sausages to, as the Independent put it, “offer Berliners something a bit more exciting than dull post-war rations.”

More exciting, indeed. Currywurst quickly became a Berlin institution, establishing massive staying power to the point where it’s a dish of pride for an entire nation. It’s had a commemorative coin, it’s had a song dedicated to it, it has its own museum, and that museum claims that more than 800 million currywursts are consumed in Germany every year. That’s a little more than 25 portions every single second, around the clock, day in and day out. It’s an astonishing figure, but it still makes you wonder where Volkswagen fits into all of this.

Well, in 1973, Volkswagen realized its workers needed something economical and protein-rich to eat for lunch in factory cafeterias, so it started serving currywurst using bockwurst sausages made in its own butcher shop. Evidently, it worked, because Volkswagen’s most popular, best-selling single product in 2019 was … a sausage. Part number 199 398 500 A, to be precise. However, it was unavailable in one internal cafeteria for a few years starting in 2021 due to health initiatives that didn’t work, because partial discontinuation of Volkswagen currywurst almost sparked a national incident. I’m not joking.

In 2021, following news of Volkswagen’s main cafeteria switching to a vegetarian menu, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder took to LinkedIn to put the automaker on blast for discontinuing this dish.

If I were still on the #VW supervisory board , something like this would not have happened: One of the company canteens is removing currywurst from the menu and switching to completely meat-free options. Vegetarian food is good, I do that myself at times. But no currywurst as a matter of principle? No! And do the employees at VW really want that? In 2019, the Volkswagen butcher shop still produced 7 million currywursts. Currywurst with fries is one of the energy bars for skilled workers in production. It should stay that way. When I’m in Berlin, my first stop is usually one of the excellent currywurst stands. There are also excellent currywursts in Hanover. I don’t want to miss out on that, and I think many others don’t want that in their company canteens either.

Roughly two years later, and the ban has been reversed. Euro News reports that workers wanted the iconic dish back, and so it’s being served in that cafeteria once again. Of course, it’s not currywurst without the right ketchup, which is where part number 00010 ZDK-259-101 comes in, now available in America as part number DRG-TOM4UTO. Volkswagen credits enthusiast and influencer Jamie Orr with inspiring the brand to open up ketchup availability in America, so hats off to Mr. Orr.

Perhaps best of all, one bottle of Volkswagen curry ketchup is totally free, you just need to order it through VW’s DriverGear website. Once it arrives, simply grab your bockwurst of choice, cook to an internal temperature of 160 degrees Fahrenheit, chop it up, smother it with curry Gewürz ketchup, and serve with fries.

So there we are, a slice of German cuisine for America, courtesy of Volkswagen. Who knows? It might catch on. Sausages slathered in spicy ketchup and served with fries sound adjacent enough to American cuisine that it wouldn’t be surprising if this stuff builds some momentum. Really, the only problem is that Volkswagen’s only bringing a limited amount of this currywurst-specific Gewürz ketchup to America, but with enough demand, maybe someone could make a business case for its permanence.

(Photo credits: Volkswagen)

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