“Democracy sausages” have long been a fixture of the Australian election – but this year food delivery behemoth Uber Eats is cashing in on the beloved tradition.
Uber Eats is offering voters “democracy sausages” on 3 May for “hardworking Australians” who don’t have access to a snag on election day.
But unlike the regular democracy sausages, which are a fundraising opportunity for the schools, churches and community halls where polling centres are located, these snags are prepared at “democracy sausage stores” operated by Maverick, an external marketing company.
In Sydney, for instance, they are being cooked and packed for delivery at a temporary kitchen available for hire in Ultimo, according to Uber Eats.
The sausages are only available in certain inner parts of Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney on Saturday from midday until sold out, with 1,000 available in each city. Users outside the delivery zone are told they can buy ingredients to construct their own on the Uber Eats app.
Guardian Australia ordered a vegetarian sausage and a meat sausage with sauces and onion on Saturday afternoon. It cost $11.60 for both sausages including delivery and service fee. Uber said $3.50 for every sausage would be donated to Australian Red Cross partners, to the maximum value of $10,500.
The products arrived in less than 30 minutes, in green boxes which read “democracy sausage delivered”. Inside the boxes were a single sausage on a piece of white bread, sauce sachets and another quote reading “exercise your democratic bite”.
The sausages, which were reasonably cold, were contained in a sheet designed to look like ballot paper. But rather than listing candidates, the paper ticked the customer’s preferences for sauces, onion and variety of sausage, with a disclaimer noting “this is not an official voting form”.
The managing director of Uber Eats Australia, Ed Kitchen, said “thousands” of Australians were likely to miss out on democracy sausages as not every polling place had a barbecue.
“For those of you able to make use of a local sausage sizzle, I strongly encourage you to support the community fundraising efforts first and foremost – that’s what I’ll be doing,” he said.
The company enlisted celebrity chef Iain “Huey” Hewitson to promote the deal. He said he was “pleased to don my sausage suspenders to help ensure finding a democracy sausage is obtainable this year in areas where the local school might not be turning over these tasty morsels”.
Some social media users raised their eyebrows at Uber capitalising on the trend.
Many polling centres are located at schools, which take the opportunity to fundraise by offering a barbecue, cake stall, or selling plants or books.
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“That is so unAustralian,” one user posted on Facebook. “Schools or community groups are meant to make a few dollars selling a sausage sizzle. Not some big corporations.”
Another labelled it a “thoughtless tone deaf publicity stunt”, while a third simply wrote: “who wants a cold limp sausage? It’s democracy manifest.”
The democracy sausage has grown in popularity in recent years and was listed as the word of the year by the Australian National Dictionary Centre in 2016, cementing its place in the Australian lexicon.
Alex Dawson from the Democracy Sausage project had uploaded more than 1,600 sausage stalls and other stands operating around the nation to its grassroots website days out from the election, 900 more than the last federal election in 2022.
There were reports of election day sausage sizzles at every continent in the globe this year – including Antarctica.
According to Kate Armstrong at the Museum of Australian Democracy (MoAD), the term “democracy sausage” was coined around 2010 when a Snag Votes website first listed and mapped polling places offering a sausage in bread.
“The popularity of the democracy sausage is in part due to voting being compulsory in Australia,” she said.
“Polling places are typically primary schools and community halls, and polling days are on Saturday … naturally this presents an ideal opportunity for local associations and parents and friends’ groups to fundraise by setting up food- or refreshment-based activities around their polling place.
“Early on it was cakes, jams and even crafts, but with the rise in popularity of the portable gas barbecue in the ‘80s, this extended to the much-loved Aussie sausage sizzle.”
