Sausage-themed hotel not ‘wurst’ idea for bringing home the bacon
Sausages on the menu, sausage motifs on the wallpaper, sausage mobiles hanging from the ceiling — and to top it off, a sausage-shaped pillow on your bed.
What sounds like a vegetarian’s nightmare is the audacious dream come true of Claus Boebel, a fourth-generation butcher and proprietor of what he calls the world’s first and only sausage-themed hotel.
Located in a tidy village, a 40-minute drive south of the German city of Nuremberg, the Bratwurst Hotel has done brisk business since its opening in September, with guests from overseas popping in for a visit.
In a slope-roofed stone house, the inn with seven rooms and two conference spaces caters to foodies and tourists looking for a splash of local color. Behind the quirky initiative is a Hail Mary bid to keep alive the local butcher’s shop — an institution in most towns that was once a pillar of Germany’s “Mittelstand” economy of small and mediumsized businesses — in the face of competition and slacking meat consumption.
“I want to show that small craftsman shops like mine can survive when you have clever ideas,” said Boebel. “Plus I love life here in the countryside and, rather than leave, want to draw customers here to Rittersbach.”
The Boebel family has produced and sold meats here since the 19th century.
But Sunday roasts, big multi-generational meals at home and a heavily carnivorous diet are fading from German life, with meat consumption down 8 percent since 1991.
And despite a slight increase of late in food spending in Germany, to around 10.6 percent of monthly household expenditure, the people of France (13.2 percent) and Italy (14.2 percent) still fork out significantly more.
Thus family businesses that pride themselves on quality produce often need to get creative to bring in the punters.
‘Tasteful’ decor
Boebel, 48, is a rosy-cheeked entrepreneur of boundless enthusiasm who speaks in the rolling r’s of the Franconia regional dialect.
It’s not the first time he’s got creative to promote his brand, beginning in 2003 with his “Wurstbrief,” or sausage letter, featuring a vacuum-packed envelope with the meat and a postcard inside ready for mailing to friends and family.
Boebel’s bright green delivery car — matching the hotel’s wooden window shutters and the striking facade of the butcher’s shop — zips through the village’s narrow roads as a “Wurst taxi” bringing meat to hungry customers. Never one to dream small, Boebel also launched a global online shop, sending his canned wares made from locally sourced livestock to a clientele in far-flung places like Hawaii and Jamaica.
But the hotel, in which he’s invested some 700,000 euros (US$800,000) in the renovation, takes things to another level.
In the narrow lobby of the hotel, the word “sausage” is emblazoned on the wall in the languages of the world including Russian