Two weeks ago I travelled to New York and, of course, visited some c-stores and foodservice providers. As a returning guest to the city, I wanted to check on a foodservice format that I discovered last year, just to see how it was doing.

To my surprise I found it had closed down just recently. I asked a few people what had happened and also did some web research to read blogs and comments.

The bottom line is simple: a concept, which is best in class in one place in the world, might just not be in another.

Some history

Back in 2011 the new QSR (Quick Service Restaurant) Currywurst Bros opened up in Bleeker Street, New York, selling – of course – German Currywurst.

To understand the concept you need to know a German Currywurst is nothing else but a hot pork sausage, cut into pieces, topped with curry-spiced-ketchup and some curry powder.

Invented in Berlin in 1949 as a cheap street snack, this dish has become quite famous and established over the years in Germany. Simple food, easy to eat, average quality and a good price.

Simple is good

When you travel around the world you often see restaurants struggling when they try to offer a bit of everything or become too complex with their menus.

On the other hand, you can find a lot of examples, like Currywurst, where just one simple dish makes a QSR operator happy, delivering a good profit with a small menu. IN-N-OUT Burger on the US west coast does it with its hamburger-cheeseburger-fries offer; as does Wao Bao in Chicago with its Baos-Bowls-Potstickers offer.

So, since Currywurst works well in Germany and simple offerings work well in general, why not trying to start a Currywurst offer in good old NYC?

Clean, purisitic, modern

The first Currywurst Bros outlet opened in Bleeker Street at the beginning of 2011.

It was a modern looking store, clean and puristic; with a yellow and red design scheme, echoing the colours of curry powder and ketchup. You would visit the location and feel good about it. It offered a simple dish in a modern environment.

What happened?

After talking to a few people in the city and reading website reviews, it seems the German Currywurst had some real aficionados.

But, as Bleeker Street is quite an upmarket location in terms of property rents, it had to generate a lot of Currywurst sales and obviously not just from aficionados.

And there lays the problem.

New York, the big apple, the city that never sleeps… a city so versatile you can get nearly everything you crave.

In such surroundings, Germany’s Currywurst concept was nothing more than an average pork sausage with regular curry-spiced-ketchup and some curry powder on top.

Something to learn

What can we take away from this? You can have a successful product and do everything right in terms of design, menu and advertising; but you can still fail if you don’t do your research on the local market, the competition, the consumer and their expectations.

Without the history a wurst is just a wurst.