Grills With Legs Beckon Germans to Bratwurst
BERLIN — Jürgen Stiller regularly stands outside Berlin’s historic Friedrichstrasse train station with a four-pound canister of flammable propane strapped to his back. But if a police officer approaches him, it is only to buy one of the hot bratwurst sizzling on the flaming grill suspended from his shoulders.
Mr. Stiller works as a Grillwalker, a one-man mobile sausage-cooking machine. He and his colleagues can be seen around the capital, turning their browning bratwursts with tongs and tempting pedestrians with the scent of cooking meat wafting from their grills.
The itinerant sausage salesman is so successful here that copycats have sprung up, leading local newspapers to talk of a “War of the Wursts,” at locations like the famous Alexanderplatz, heavy with foot traffic and therefore potential customers, where they compete head to head.
It is also a sign of how seriously Germans still take their sausages, in a country where records show the Thuringian bratwurst dates from at least 1432, and in a city where an entire museum opened in August dedicated to the other local favorite, the spicy Currywurst.
They are a hit with local commuters thanks to the low price — an inexpensive $1.75 for a bratwurst in a roll with mustard or ketchup. Tourists unaccustomed to seeing a kitchen stroll around on two feet gawk, gape and take pictures. Mr. Stiller estimated that he is photographed more than 30 times a day.
Grillwalkers like Mr. Stiller stand out under their bright orange umbrellas, which protect them from the harsh summer sun and the chilly raindrops that already fall here in early autumn.
“Oh, it makes them so happy. They think it’s funny,” Mr. Stiller, 37, said of the tourists. But other passers-by object to what they see as inhumane working conditions. “They say, ‘Man, put it down. Think about your health,’ ” Mr. Stiller said.
But Mr. Stiller said he considered himself lucky to be a Grillwalker, having come to Berlin because there were no jobs in the East German town of Eggesin, where he grew up. He said he carried much heavier burdens than the grill, which weighs 44 pounds fully loaded, when he used to work on construction sites, and he said he made a lot more money now.
Germany is known for both its innovative engineering and its sausages, so the technical leap could seem almost inevitable. But it was the high hurdles put up by the city’s bureaucracy that fathered the invention of these unusual contraptions that are now as much a part of the city’s sights as the television tower in Alexanderplatz or the cathedral, outside of which Grillwalkers also hock their sausages.
After losing his job in hotel management in 1997, Bertram Rohloff wanted to open a stand to sell sandwiches, but found he could not get the necessary permits to set up shop. So instead he envisaged an evolution in food-preparation technology, a step beyond the rolling hot-dog cart, because without the necessary permits, neither the grill nor the sausages could touch the ground.
“You couldn’t get an A-1 location like Alexanderplatz for all the money in the world,” Mr. Rohloff said in an interview recently in the company’s home base in the Friedrichshain neighborhood in the former eastern part of the city. And the salesmen’s mobility allows them to follow the crowds, with Grillwalkers popping up outside nightclubs on busy evenings, at major parades and even at union demonstrations, which Mr. Rohloff said were among the best places for business.
As he worked on the invention, Mr. Rohloff considered everything from burning charcoal to hooking the grill up to a car battery — which he rejected because it would run down in just 10 minutes — before settling on propane. He designed it with an automatic cut-off mechanism for the gas, to ensure that it was safe in the event of an accident.
Mr. Rohloff was the first person to don his invention and sell bratwurst on the street. He now has 15 employees selling sausages around the city in teams of two; they take turns wearing the grill and reloading the sausages, rolls and condiments.
But his ambitions extend far beyond the German capital, and the 17 to 30 cents in profit made on each sausage. In all, the company has built 73 Grillwalkers, including the newest one, which sits in his office, sharing space with towers of jumbo buckets of mustard stacked against the wall. He has subcontractors renting them in cities around the country, from Hanover to Karlsruhe.
And Mr. Rohloff has sold the equipment, at $7,100 a piece, to customers in Bulgaria, Colombia, South Korea and elsewhere, including one to a man in Nebraska. Just this week he sold one to a client in South Africa, which next year will host the World Cup soccer tournament.
Mr. Rohloff patented the design, though that has not discouraged imitators, like the company that appeared on the scene in Berlin last year operating under the name Grillrunner, with yellow umbrellas instead of orange. Mr. Rohloff has hired a lawyer to try to crack down on the competition, but they have not gone to court yet.
Out on the street, an uneasy truce has developed between the rival salesmen, who stand eye to eye at the entrance to the Alexanderplatz subway station. “At the beginning, there were some pretty serious arguments, but today we keep our distance,” said Hendrik Zickert, 27, a Grillwalker salesman.
Not everyone is a fan, particularly not the competition from complete stands with a broader selection but higher fixed costs and thus higher prices. “We often ask ourselves how people can buy their sausages from them,” said Petra Schöbs, who on a recent afternoon was working at an Alexanderplatz stand advertising “original Thuringian bratwurst” for just under $3. “Our selection, our quality is much higher, and with us its much more hygienic,” Ms. Schöbs said.
But one Grillwalker customer said she thought there were advantages to watching the sausages getting cooked, if not made. “I don’t think it’s unhygienic,” said Lydia Eiglsperger, 41, a vacationing Bavarian who bought a bratwurst for each of her children. “Standing out there, they can’t hide a thing.”
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