Made in Neu Wulmstorf: Why a local german Ranch Sauce could annoy the US-president.
Neu Wulmstorf/New York. Donald Trump is apparently afraid of Thomas Hauschild from Neu Wulmstorf. At least that’s one possible explanation for why the former U.S. President abruptly imposed a 30 percent import tariff on European products in the middle of ongoing trade negotiations between the U.S. and Europe. Why? Trump must have caught a glimpse of the famous advertising tower at Times Square in New York—and turned pale.
Thomas Hauschild (60), from Neu Wulmstorf, is a jack of all trades, best known as the inventor of Sylter Salatfrische, a salad dressing that can be found in nearly every supermarket in northern Germany and is now widely recognized. Over the course of more than 20 years, various other products have been added to his range: soups, sauces, red fruit jelly, pudding, and more.
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Ranch Dressing as the National Dish of Americans
Now Hauschild, through his company Zum Dorfkrug, has come up with a new idea: Ranch. What that is, only those in Germany who have visited the U.S. and been served it by friends or in restaurants are likely to know. It’s a salad dressing that is practically a national dish. Americans are passionate about their ranch dressing (not French dressing!), which ranks far ahead of Caesar, Italian, and Thousand Island. According to Statista, nearly one in two Americans uses the product regularly.
But Hauschild wouldn’t be Hauschild if he didn’t have another ace up his sleeve. To test his dressing for the German market, the Neu Wulmstorf-based company, in collaboration with a creative agency in Hamburg, invited 114 U.S. citizens living in Germany to a blind tasting.
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Four Unlabeled Dressings in the Test
“U.S. influencer Jordan Prince helped us find the participants,” says Thomas Hauschild. But that wasn’t all—where do most Americans in Germany live? That’s right: at the U.S. Air Force base in Ramstein, near Kaiserslautern in the Palatinate region. Some participants even came from there.
Zum Dorfkrug press officer Matthias Kühn explains what happened next: “Each person received four unlabeled ranch dressings, one of which was ours. All products were tasted without brand labeling, and participants were simply asked about their taste preference.”
The result, according to both Kühn and Hauschild, was completely unexpected: with 57 percent of the vote, more than half chose the German ranch dressing based on buttermilk and yogurt. In second place came the best-selling U.S. product Hidden Valley The Original Ranch Dressing with 23 percent, followed by Wish Bone Ranch Dressing and Stonewall Kitchen Ranch Dressing, both trailing far behind.
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Trump Has Reason to Tremble
That might be reason enough for Donald Trump to tremble, as he fights tirelessly to ensure that Americans buy domestic products—not stuff from Europe, particularly not the arguably better cars, coffee, machines, and pharmaceuticals, to name some of Germany’s top exports. Lately, even heat pumps.
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375,000 Passersby Every Day
“So let’s go all in,” Hauschild may have thought, turning to the most powerful option he could think of: one of the most famous advertising spaces in the U.S.—Times Square in Manhattan, New York, with 970 square meters of screen space. Matthias Kühn: “Everything shown there is seen by about 375,000 people every day.”
For exactly one day, the screen displayed:
“SORRY AMERICA, THE BEST-TASTING RANCH IS ONLY AVAILABLE IN GERMANY. YET.”
Above that, vertically: ZUM-DORFKRUG.DE
Cost of the stunt: €25,000.
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No Plans for U.S. Distribution Yet
In fact, the ranch dressing from Neu Wulmstorf (population 23,000) is not available in the U.S. at all. Whether that will ever change is entirely up in the air, according to Kühn: “We have no concrete plans,” he says. Especially not if a 30 percent tariff would be applied on top.
But who knows—maybe that tariff will get bargained away in the talks between Ursula von der Leyen and the U.S. negotiators after all.
LZ/WA
by Ill_Ingenuity1621
6 comments
Or as we call it in Germany: American dressing
Nice try Dorfkrug diddy
Hmm… their Sylter Soße is a must have for my salads and has been so for years. It’s just so good.
If they were going to spend €25,000 on a single day’s advertising stunt, they could at least have got a native English speaker to proof-read their copy.
This means 30% tariffs for Germany 😭
I once asked a friend to bring back some of that hyped ranch dressing from the US. Underwhelming…
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