Gone in a Flash, VW’s Ketchup Was (Probably?) Good While It Lasted
Many, many years ago, as fulfillment of a childhood dream, for one brief summer I was a trucker. I hauled tomatoes in 12-hour shifts from the fields to a processing plant in California’s Central Valley, where they were packaged and shipped off to become ketchup. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and each trip to the plant required a stop on the scales, where, in addition to weighing the trailers, a probe would also snag a sample of the load for analysis.
I made a lot of fresh salsa that summer, as the tomato fields were always in close proximity to onion fields and pepper fields. I also learned something important about the tomato business: M.O.T. It stands for “material other than tomato.” Each 50,000-pound load was allowed up to three percent M.O.T., and that “other material” could have been anything: dirt, stalks, stems, machine oil, a little mouse family, the finger of some unfortunate field hand . . .
I mention this only because Volkswagen announced this week that its ketchup was now available in the U.S., to be distributed free of charge through the company’s lifestyle and apparel site, DriverGear.
Since 1996, VW Gewürz Ketchup, part no. 00010 ZDK-259-101, has been a staple condiment for the brand’s other food product, currywurst (part no. 199 398 500 A), which is sold in the restaurants at VW’s six German plants, as well as in German grocers and at football (soccer) stadiums around the country.
This year marks VW’s 75th anniversary, and it’s pulling out all the stops, apparently. “We’re celebrating more than a big anniversary of selling cars,” said Rachael Zaluzec, senior vice president of customer experience and brand marketing for Volkswagen of America. “We’re celebrating stories, memories, passion, and all the fun, and unexpected things that make Volkswagen the brand we are today—things like our Gewürz Ketchup Brand condiment.”
Here’s the kicker, though: In less than a day, the free samples of Gewürz Ketchup were gone, sold out, ausverkauft! VW says that if you still want to sample the spicy condiment, which is said to be more viscous than traditional ketchup but probably less so than the fluid in the coupling of its Syncro 4WD system, you’ll find it on October 5 in Los Angeles at ChainFEST, the world’s largest gourmet chain food festival.
In the meantime, if you’re looking for material other than ketchup, DriverGear still has plenty of hats and shirts to sell you.
Oh, so YOU’RE the guy leaving the trail of red slush all down 99 from Merced to Madera?
When I took my son to visit Eagle Field, he would not believe the “bloody-looking stuff’ on the highway was tomato juice – until we saw the tomatoes being hauled in what we considered trailer-style gravel trucks. I wonder what the weight difference is between start and end of a haul?
This is my VW Ketchup story:
While attending San Jose State University in the late 60’s – I sold my beloved but tired GTO and bought a new VW Bug. Up until that time – McDonald’s sold a large “Dunk” cup of Ketchup to plunge your fries into for .05. Suddenly they switched to those stupid little foil packets – and they limited you to just 1 per order of fries. Myself I probably used at least 10 Ketchup’s packs on a Big Mac and a large order of fries. I offered to pay extra for those hard to open packs – but it was their policy not to sell them. My solution was to get a large bottle of Heinz Ketchup and kept it on the package shelf below the dash. Worked great – until I was enjoying an enthusiastic drive over the hill on HW 17 headed for Santa Cruz. On a sharp sweeping left curve the bottle of Heinz shot across the package shelf hitting the passenger side firewall exploding sending glass shards and Ketchup everywhere. After a very messy cleanup – I had to replace Heinz with the local store’s cheapo house brand in a plastic bottle. Lesson learned. I sure would enjoy sampling VW’s Ketchup.
I would not have not known that they had a ketchup. So is it tasty? Do they have a catsup? :^)
You want some VW curry ketchup? All ya gotta do is mix 1/4c ketchup with ½ tsp, mix well and you have curry ketchup. It’s as good as you can get in Germany
When I worked in Camden NJ in the ’70s, every year at harvest time the streets surrounding the Campbell’s soup plant would be full of semi-trailer sized dump trucks full of tomatoes. Two at a time they backed down a short incline and had their loads of tomatoes washed out of the beds by firehoses, to be pumped into the factory for soup. The water they floated in was ugly black — lots of the M.O.T. from the Garden State’s fields. Sorta put me off tomato soup for a while.
It’s a condiment. Really good ketchup won’t save or hided a bad burger. If I’m looking to impress asking the butcher for 70-30 instead of 80-20. Cooked medium/ medium well still nice and greasy juicy but requires the right bun. The bun or roll is the second most important ingredient. Put out a large variety of ‘build your own burger’ options. In season ‘Jersey Big Boys’ from a road side stand and grab a dozen ears since you’re there. Mayo is another story all together. What you use in the potato salad is important. Don’t even think about getting me started with ‘Miracle Whip’ or those freaks who put ketchup on a dog.