From stocks to sausages

When Thomas Brausse lost his job as a stock broker during the height of the financial crisis, he decided to take a risk and invest more than 50,000 euros converting an old bus into a lunch stand.

Now Brausse serves bankers and construction workers sausages named after the major indices - like the DAX, the Nikkei, and the barbeque flavored Dow Jones. It's a dream he'd had for awhile.

"Because we are just 250 meters away from my old office," says Brausse. "I saw the need of having a snack point like that offering typical German food."

He named it the Frankfurter Worscht-Boerse, or the Frankfurt Sausage Exchange. It's a fitting name for a lunch counter that sits in the shadow of one of Frankfurt's tallest banking buildings, where Brausse was once employed as a trader.

When life gives you lemons, make sausages

Brausse says his current profession isn't all that different from his old job.

"The (old) business I would call the delivery against payment business," he explains. "I delivered the shares and get the payment in. That's maybe the only thing which is comparable to the new job: I deliver the french fries and the sausage and I get the money in. But it's more real."

Brausse still sees former colleagues, but this time it's from behind the lunch counter. Sometimes they say hello, and sometimes it's a little awkward.

Friends who knew Brausse when he was still a trader say his decision to open up this lunch stand caught everyone by surprise.

"After a few weeks, he told us he bought this bus at eBay. We said, 'That's crazy!'," says Brausse's long-time friend Marcel Loeschner. "I forgot the price he paid for it, but he was so excited saying, 'Yeah, this is the right thing!'"

Building a small business

Brausse converted the bus into a lunch stand with funds from his severance package and the German government's start-up assistance program, which paid him 25 percent of his former salary for the first nine months of operation.

He has since added a permanent wooden structure to protect customers from the elements, and says his life is completely different now. He actually spends more time working, about 12 to 14 hours a day. But he likes the independence and the lack of office politics.

"I'm working on my own. I am not depending on any thoughts of any manager above me. So I can do whatever I want to do," he says. "I am more flexible in my personal life."

Even though it's tough going sometimes, Brausse says he doesn't regret his decision, especially when he sees the stress on the faces of his former colleagues in the financial sector.

"The pressure on the firms, on the owners of the firms, on the employers working for them is still the same and maybe even more," he says. "So I don't see that the very good times are back."

A long line of lunchtime customers

Thomas Huebner, a portfolio manager, comes to the crowded lunch stand a couple times a week. He's a big fan of the currywurst—that's combination of chopped sausage, ketchup and spices. "It's one of the best in Frankfurt," he says.

Huebner waxes philosophical when asked whether he thinks it's a good idea to leave finance and open a small business – even though he has no concrete plans of following suit. He says life inside the banking sector can be very narrow.

"These people just have one issue it is earning money, but life is more than earning money," says Huebner.

He also points out that Brausse's decision to go from stocks to sausages makes a lot of hungry bankers like him happy.

"Yeah from this point of view, I am one of the winners of the financial crisis."

And if Brausse's business continues to grow, then so is he.

Author: Caitlan Carroll, Frankfurt am Main
Editor: Sam Edmonds