First up, from PYMNTS, March 24:
Tesla Enters Dining Business with Drive-In Restaurant
Tesla is entering the dining business, preparing to open a drive-in restaurant in Los Angeles.
This new location would allow diners to eat and watch movies on an outdoor screen while they charged their electric vehicles. But as the New York Times (NYT) reported Friday (March 21), the restaurant’s opening has run into a roadblock: Tesla’s CEO.
Elon Musk’s involvement in the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has turned his car company into a lightning rod, sparking protests at Tesla dealerships as well as a few cases of vandalism. Meanwhile, Tesla’s sales continue to slip.
According to the NYT, this has made finding chefs something of a challenge. For example, Caroline Styne and Suzanne Goin, owners of the Lucques Group of restaurants in Los Angeles, decided against operating the diner in 2023.
At the time, the reasons were economic. But now, Styne said she’s changed her mind about the car company, recently swapping her Tesla for an electric BMW.
Max Block, founder of the Los Angeles hospitality-communications agency Carvingblock, told the NYT that any chef would need to factor in Musk’s reputation before agreeing to cook for the Tesla diner.
At the same time, a diner where customers can watch movies while eating food brought by roller skate-wearing carhops — something Musk has suggested — would appeal to “a culture where people dine for experiences,” Block said....
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Meanwhile, in Wolfsburg, from Morning Brew, March 21:
Volkswagen is a sausage company
The automaker sold more VW-branded sausages than VW-branded cars last year.
Volkswagen’s bestselling product isn’t one you whip down the Autobahn at 160km/h. The automaker recently revealed that it sold a record number of its in-house-produced sausages last year. Sausage sales were up 2% over the year, outnumbering shipments of VM-branded vehicles, which declined from 2023.
The automaker sold 8.5 million sausages in 2024—and shipped 5.2 million VW vehicles.
Isn’t that the wrong kind of cylinder? Sausages became a vital input in Volkswagen’s production in 1973, when the auto giant began serving currywurst to workers at its Wolfsburg HQ. The seasoned weiners even have their own official part number, 199 398 500 A, but we’re pretty sure motor oil isn’t part of the recipe.
They’ve long graduated from worker treat to mass market fare:
- Only a fraction of the record number of sausages Volkswagen sold last year were hoovered up by its employees.
- Meatlovers across 12 countries can buy the Volkswagen Original sausages in places like football stadiums, corporate cafeterias, and supermarkets.
- Volkswagen’s culinary offerings don’t end with sausage: It also sold 654,000 bottles of its signature spiced ketchup bottles last year.
Sure, automobiles-to-sausages is not an apples-to-apples comparison. And the 9 million cars sold by all of Volkswagen’s brands, including Audi and Porsche, did eclipse sausage sales. But the VW sausage’s success is striking a chord this year as the car business takes a turn for the wurst.
Sausage symbolism
Volkswagen’s car and sausage sales trending in opposite directions was recently highlighted by the IG Metall Union, the labor organization representing VW employees, months after acrimonious negotiations resulted in the union and the company agreeing to up to 35,000 future job cuts....
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