Thursday, April 15, 2021 – A SHORTAGE, NOT OF VACCINE BUT OF KETCHUP

By admin

THURSDAY, APRIL 15,  2021

The

337th  Edition

WHO’S GOT THE

KETCHUP?

Who’s got the Ketchup?

Stephen Blank

You are surely aware of the great Ketchup Packet Shortage. Of course you are. Well, the Who, What, When, Where, and Why of this crisis became a riveting mystery for me to track.  After all, our Roosevelt Island Historical Society Almanac readers are a pretty savvy bunch. So I jumped in. And then, as these things happen, one Google step led to another. So come with me on my trek to the empire of condiment packets.

The What is pretty clear. Ketchup packets from take-out food have gone missing – particularly Heinz ketchup. (Full disclosure, I come from Pittsburgh where Heinz is headquartered and as a youth visited the Heinz plant on several school outings) The toney Brit newspaper, the Guardian, recently devoted serious space to this situation. They called it an American Tragedy. “It’s an American tragedy that takes place in under a minute. You eagerly open the warm takeout bag in your hands, the smell of french fries wafting through its package. Everything seems to be there until you dig around the bottom of the bag. Nothing but napkins. Where’s the ketchup?”

Who? Everyone. When? Now. Where? Apparently everywhere. (Not quite. I understand Mickie D. doesn’t use packets of condiments. Big squirty jugs instead.)

Who? Everyone. When? Now. Where? Apparently everywhere. (Not quite. I understand Mickie D. doesn’t use packets of condiments. Big squirty jugs instead.)

Why? The answer seems to be the increase in demand for the little packets, created, most likely, by the Covid-fueled gusto for take-outs. Again according to the Guardian, now citing the Wall Street Journal: “The uptick in ketchup demand has had an influence on the price of packets, which have increased 13% since January 2020, according to the Wall Street Journal.” The Journal tells us that “Long John Silver’s…said that the price increase of ketchup has cost the company an extra half-million dollars.” I told you this was serious stuff.

Fox News has followed the story, too, and reports that Heinz Ketchup packets are being scalped on eBay. Fox says that listings vary in quantity, but one lot of 50 ketchup packets recently sold for $9.99. Another listing for 100 packets sold for $11.99. Another listing for 500 ketchup packets sold for $28.95 (with free shipping). Some scamps will stop at nothing.

The fast food resto business is getting sharper. The editor of a fast food trade mag laid down the law, telling owners that they “must run a much more efficient operation. You must run a tight ship, and you cannot get by being loosey-goosey and freewheeling with your condiment packets.” No loosey-goosey with your condiment packets. That tells it like it is.

This was just the beginning of my remarkable tour. Diligent researchers on the Tedium website dug down deeply into the roots and meaning of the story. Their findings:

The first Heinz ketchup packet didn’t come about until 1968, getting beat to the market by soy sauce packets, which came about roughly a decade earlier. Note: Keep this in mind. We will return to soy in a few paragraphs. I think I still have some of the earliest packets – from 1970 or so – in my pantry. Never know when you might need them.

According to Marketplace, food companies are very particular about the size of their ketchup packets. Despite the fact that they generally can be made in larger sizes, the market has settled on nine-gram packets, despite the fact that nine grams is clearly not enough since we use like six of them in a single serving. This seems deeply suspicious. Note to self: Follow the money.

Heinz sells a lot of these packets every single year—according to the company, that’s around 11 billion or so every 365 days, or two for every person on the planet. At nine grams each, that’s about 109,000 tons of ketchup. Heinz uses more tomatoes than any other company in the world. That’s some tomatoes. Particularly since until the mid-19th century, people were still wobbly about eating tomatoes, fearing it was related to the deadly nightshade. (Others felt/feared tomatoes were an aphrodisiac.)

Heinz’s website says that “Every tomato in every bottle of HEINZ Ketchup sold in the U.S. is grown in America by passionate people (might this refer back to tomatoes as aphrodisiacs?) dedicated to growing high-quality, non-GMO tomatoes, many who have farmed with us for generations.” Apparently, Heinz has developed its own specialized strains of tomatoes for its ketchup. The website continues “Each step in the tomato-growing process is monitored by HEINZ Tomato Masters: seven of the world’s foremost experts on ketchup tomatoes, who keep HEINZ tomatoes at the highest standard of quality – because the ketchup on your table is only as good as the tomato it comes from.” Love the idea of seven Tomato Masters. Not six. Not eight. And passionate.

\Now, another question leapt up. How in the world did soy sauce packets beat ketchup packets into the market? Surely the demand for ketchup must exceed the demand for soy sauce. The trail led to a serious article in another high class mag, The Atlantic, “The Mysterious, Murky Story Behind Soy-Sauce Packets”.  

Things get a bit complicated here. Soy sauce packets track back to Howard Epstein (not that Epstein), who, as the founder of the dominant soy-sauce brand Kari-Out, is seen as the ambassador of packaged American soy sauce. Epstein became interested in food packaging because his father manufactured the flimsy plastic packaging for freezer pops. Epstein’s first venture into his father’s trade was a popcorn-packaging business, which he bought for $5,000 over 50 years ago. That didn’t work out and at 81 Epstein was looking for a change when one of his father’s salesmen, who sold tea bags, suggested he consider the soy-sauce-packaging business. In 1964, Epstein founded Kari-Out, and he says he arrived to the industry right as it was becoming commercially viable. He ran his new business out of the popcorn factory he owned. (As a fellow 81er, I am lost in admiration for a guy who starts a new business and changes the world.)

Going wasn’t easy. Epstein says that an old Jewish guy trying to break into the Chinese food business was tough. But his freezer-pop expertise gave him an edge. His break came in with affordable air travel, which went mainstream in the 1970s. To serve the newly airborne hordes of families and businessmen, airlines began offering prepared foods onboard. Epstein found his first major foothold as the primary provider of soy sauce for these in-flight meals. The Atlantic piece continues, “Cheap airfare also allowed Epstein to travel the country in search of new customers. He was scouting at a time when Chinese takeout joints were becoming as commonplace as nail salons and convenience stores in strip malls around the country.” He soon built up a widespread network of customers, and Kari-Out’s products appeared in the Chinese restaurants across the country. Now, he estimates that Kari-Out has a 50 percent market share. The company’s soy-sauce packets remain ubiquitous—Epstein recalls finding Kari-Out packets at a concession stand in rural Iceland a couple years ago. “We’ve survived 50 years,” Epstein says. “I never get sick of Chinese food or soy sauce.”

But the story doesn’t end here.  Take a deep breath. A food and drink article on Thrillist followed up The Atlantic article. They learned that what we get in soy sauce packets isn’t really soy sauce. “Rather than soybeans, most are made with ‘hydrolyzed vegetable protein,’ which — while it could be processed from soybeans — is too ambiguous of a term to know for certain. Legitimate soy sauce (Kikkoman and other Asian brands) usually lists soybeans as the second or third ingredient. The packets also usually contain caramel coloring, molasses, and MSG, none of which are present in the real stuff either.”
And on top of this, the wasabi we eat in sushi bars and take out is probably not real wasabi, but rather colored mustard and horseradish.
All the news isn’t bad: Heinz has said they are planning to increase their ketchup output by 25%.
The life of an investigative reporter isn’t easy. It’s Sunday morning and I think I will take the rest of the day off, perhaps order some take-out.
Good eating.
Stephen Blank
RIHS
April 11, 2021

UPCOMING NYPL AND RIHS ZOOM PROGRAMS

Tuesday, April 20, 7 p.m.
“Mansions and Munificence: the Gilded Age on Fifth Avenue”

REGISTER WITH THIS LINK: https://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2021/04/20/mansions-and-munificence-gilded-age-fifth-avenue

Guide, lecturer, author and teacher of art and architecture, Emma Guest-Consales leads a virtual tour of the great mansions of Fifth Avenue. Starting with the ex-home of Henry Clay Frick that now houses the Frick Collection, all the way up to the former home of Andrew Carnegie, now the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, she takes us through some of the most extravagant urban palaces the city has ever seen.

THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY

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TO ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM

WEDNESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY

LITTLE RED LIGHTHOUSE 

UNDER THE GEORGE WASHINGTON BRIDGE
ED LITCHER, ARLENE BESSENOFF, CLARA BELLA,
HARA REISER, GUY LUDWIG, JAY JACOBSON, GLORIA HERMAN
ALL GOT IT RIGHY

Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Melanie Colter  and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c)

STEPHEN BLANK

Sources

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2021/apr/06/ketchup-shortage-us-manufacturers-rush-meet-demand
https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/soy-sauce-packets-don-t-contain-soy-sauce
https://www.fox13news.com/news/ketchup-packets-being-sold-on-ebay-due-to-shortage
https://tedium.co/2016/01/07/condiment-sauce-packet-squeeze/
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/02/the-salty-murky-story-behind-soy-sauce-packets/382469/

All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated

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