Swedish furnishing giant IKEA must have been listening to the old German saying “Alles hat en Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei” when they tried to raise the price of its popular boiled hot dog while keeping a lower price for the veggie alternative.
“Everything has an end; only the sausage has two,” the saying goes, but that apparently didn’t justify two prices as Swedish meat-eaters revolted against a plan to re-price the meat version from 5 kronor to 7, while cutting the no-meat link from 10 to 5 kronor.
After a media and social media storm, the company announced that the hot dog, which goes by the name of ‘Korv,’ would be the same 5 kronor price no matter the content. IKEA issued a statement saying “A sausage is a sausage, no matter its form.” A company spokesperson said of the new policy that he “can imagine that it might stir up some feelings, but we hope for a positive reaction.”
For U.S. customers, the issue is largely theoretical: U.S. stores serve the vegetarian sausage, but not the meat version. Instead, the company focuses on Swedish meatballs, or Huvudroll, which are now available in versions made of meat, chicken, vegetable or plant. And we won’t be examining the taxonomy any further on those.
Image: The veggie version
