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.
