It is a classic in German canteens: Currywurst is one of the most popular lunches. But other dishes are outranking her. What’s on the table in canteens instead?
Hot from the grill, the sausage comes directly to the plate, accompanied by crispy fries straight from the deep fryer, topped with curry sauce and a bit of additional curry powder: the currywurst is as simple as it is popular, a classic in German canteens. It is also on the menu every two weeks on Fridays in the R+V Versicherung canteen in Wiesbaden. “There are fans who come to the office specifically because of the currywurst,” says Thomas Walter, Managing Director of R+V Gastronomy and Services.
Hardly any other lunch has achieved such great popularity throughout the country. To express his love for currywurst, Herbert Grönemeyer dedicated a song to it. When VW temporarily removed it from the menu, a real argument broke out over it – it was the “strength bar of the skilled worker in production,” said former Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder at the time.
What he seemed to be right about: According to information from the VW works council, which was available to the dpa news agency, a total of 8.33 million curry sausages were sold in VW canteens in 2023. That was a record. And in Thomas Walter’s R+V canteen, hundreds of them are served over the counter on days when currywurst is on the menu.
Vegetarian and vegan increasingly popular
Other dishes in German canteens have long since overtaken currywurst. Instead, vegetarian and vegan dishes are becoming increasingly popular across Germany, as can be seen from the menu charts of the catering provider “apetito”, which are published once a year. After that, the currywurst only made it to third place among the most popular dishes in 2023. Last year, the vegetarian cappelletti pesto pan was in second place, and the most popular canteen food was spaghetti Bolognese.
Marco Constanzo from the Frankfurt catering company “Mainfood” also notices that the demand for canteen food is changing: “We definitely notice that the trend is towards lighter food and vegan food.” In his canteen kitchen, around 300 lunches are cooked every day for four canteens across the city. Cooking is done here for both employees who do physical work and those who sit at their desks. “That’s why we try to cook as balanced as possible, for example with whole grain products,” says the chef.
Politics calls for healthier lunches
Healthy, light, tasty: politicians have been demanding this from lunch in the canteen, and not just since the pandemic. For example, in a debate on the government’s nutrition strategy last week, Federal Food Minister Cem Özdemir advocated that food in canteens should become healthier.
And young people in particular are increasingly demanding this, observes Mona Freundschuh. She is a nutrition and quality expert at R+V Versicherung in Wiesbaden and, among other things, ensures that the dishes that are served here meet the specifications of the German Nutrition Society: “These specifications specify, among other things, how how many meat dishes there should be per week, how often fish is on the menu or that there are vegetarian dishes every day.”
Canteen as a meeting place in the company
With a wide variety of dishes, the insurance company also wants to establish the canteen as a meeting place – a meeting point within the company where employees consciously come together. Because home office is now firmly established at R+V – just as it is throughout Germany: in February of this year, around 24.1 percent of employees worked at least part of the time from home if they had the opportunity to do so. In 2019, before the pandemic, it was just ten percent of Germans. This emerges from current data from the ifo Institute.
The decision to always offer currywurst at R+V Versicherung on Fridays was also a matter of company policy, reports R+V Gastronomy and Services Managing Director Walter: “For us, like many other companies that offer home office, Friday is Friday weak day.” This means that on Fridays, many employees who have the opportunity work from home.
According to current data from the Ifo Institute, 55 percent of employees across Germany work from home on Fridays if they have the opportunity to do so. The fact that many employees are still working from home is also evident in the canteens: R+V currently sells around 1,400 lunches every day – before the pandemic there were up to 2,200 every day. R+V is hoping to attract more people to the office and thus to the canteen with the currywurst on Fridays.
Home office makes planning difficult
The Frankfurt catering “Mainfood” is also clearly feeling the decline. “The demand for canteen food has fallen significantly during the pandemic because people are still working from home a lot,” reports managing director Mathieu Marquant. In a canteen where “Mainfood” was able to sell around 100 lunches a day before the pandemic, today on bad days it sells less than half.
Especially since many of the companies whose employees eat lunch in one of the “main food” canteens have not set fixed home office days. Instead, employees can decide for themselves when they want to come to the office. “This also means that our business becomes much more difficult to plan and we have to calculate even more precisely,” says Marquant.