Digital dinner: Finnish food brand HK jumps into the metaverse to serve “metawurst”

Digital dinner: Finnish food brand HK jumps into the metaverse to serve “metawurst”

Helsinki, Uusimaa, March 1st, 2023

One of Finland’s leading food brands HK connects Mettwurst lovers to virtual reality by creating a sausage to be savoured in metaverse. Five NFTs, called Metavursti (“metawurst”) will be auctioned on the OpenSea marketplace starting March 1st.

Nordic food expertise and innovation is at the top of the world. For the Finns, sausage plays an essential role in local food culture. Traditional Finnish sausage “meetvursti” was invented in 1956 by a Finnish meat technology pioneer Fritz P. Niinivaara, after which the method spread all over the world. Not even the world famous German Mettwurst would exist in its current form without Finnish food technology.

Thus, the digital Metavursti is an ode to the Finnish mettwurst.

“Supporting and developing Finnish food culture passionately has always been important to HK, and we will continue to do so strongly in the future as well. Metavursti is a tribute to Finnish mettwurst and food expertise”, HK’s Marketing Manager Riikka Haarasilta-Suutarinen explains.

A culture of experimentation has always been an integral part of HK’s business. It came naturally to act as the forerunners of Finnish food brands in the metaverse together with the brand house SEK.

“The five Metavursti sausages are digital reproductions of HK’s beloved, delicious classic products. We can’t take taste and smell into the metaverse yet, but design and innovation we sure can”, SEK’s Lead Creative Samuel Räikkönen adds.

An ode to the Finnish meat lovers

HK is bold to try something new, comments Sointu Karjalainen, an expert of NFT and blockchain:

“Metaverse enables a new kind of encounter between the customer and the brand, and only the sky is limit. The game is unlocked, I’m looking forward to what’s to come”, Karjalainen says, futurist and the founder of Block Lane and The Good Cartel Web3 companies.

Metaverse has been predicted to be a part of Finns’ future. For example, Gartner believes that by 2026, 25 percent of people will spend at least one hour per day in the metaverse, and 30% of organizations will offer products and services in virtual meeting points in the future.

“For modern brands, it’s important to tap into culture and play with new mediums. That’s what Metavursti is all about: HK is the first Finnish food brand to enter the metaverse, and it’s doing it with a twinkle in its eye. By turning beloved mettwursts into NFT-metawursts, we found a sweet spot that plays with a new medium in a way that’s easy to understand even for people who are not that metaverse-savvy”, SEK’s creatives Laura Syväniemi and Samuel Räikkönen says.

The starting price for Metavursti’s are 0.0020 ETH, comparable to the price of a pack of mettwurst sausages at the grocery store.

SEK, part of GREY, is a creative brand house of 130 passionate professionals. At SEK, bold creativity is combined with strategy, vision and data. A successful brand is built with touching and business-enhancing concepts. We produce relevant content, from communications to design, for all customer encounter points.

With 110 years of experience, we at HKScan make life tastier—today and tomorrow. Our strategic target is to grow into a versatile food company. Our home markets are Finland, Sweden and Denmark, where around 5,400 of our professionals make responsible and locally produced food for consumers’. Our well-known brands include HK, Kariniemen, Via, Scan, Pärsons and Rose. We are developing a more #climate-friendly way of producing food and our Zero Carbon target is a carbon-neutral food chain by the end of 2040. HK Scan is a publicly listed company, and in 2022, our net sales from continuing operations totalled over EUR 1.8 billion.