“This is a healthy product”: how sauerkraut wants to restore its image

“Better good sauerkraut than bad caviar. For the Association for the Promotion of Alsatian Sauerkraut (AVCA), this statement is truer than ever. To restore its brand image and cope with declining consumption, sauerkraut wants to refocus on its nutritional properties.

AVCA has just launched a €50,000 national media advertising campaign for the first time since receiving a Protected Geographical Indication in 2018. The campaign targets the large northeastern quarter of the Hexagon, which is more receptive to the traditional product of Alsatian cuisine.

So far, each Frenchman consumes an average of 600 grams of sauerkraut per year, i.e. a dish three times a year. As winters get shorter and shorter, the challenge is to convince them that the product can be enjoyed all year round, even raw.

“Sauerkraut is primarily a vegetable”

“We need to be able to change the image of the product. Sauerkraut is a healthy product that you want to eat all year round, even in hot weather, when people are used to eating it in the winter with sausage snacks, ”explains Hugo Meyer, sales representative of the Meyer Wagner sauerkraut factory in Krautergersheim (Bas-Rhin). “Sauerkraut is first and foremost a vegetable,” recalls Sebastian Müller, president of the Alsatian Sauerkraut Promotion Association (AVCA). “After a year of indigestion, you can eat sauerkraut, it’s nice.”

This plan to restore the image of sauerkraut, presented at a press conference this Thursday in Strasbourg, is primarily aimed at the “mother of the family between the ages of 30 and 45 who wants to cook healthy food.” “That’s how we get the most out of it,” says Jean-Luc Meyer, head of recycling company Meyer Wagner.

The sector doesn’t want consumers to turn away sauerkraut with a side dish and its festive side. “We should keep the conviviality of sauerkraut with a side dish and just add other uses to it.”