Heinz Tomato Ketchup
Heinz Tomato Ketchup is a brand of ketchup produced by the H. J. Heinz Company as part of Kraft Heinz. Heinz Ketchup holds 80% of the market share in Europe and 60% in the United States.

History
First introduced as "Catsup" in 1876 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Heinz Tomato Ketchup remains the best-selling brand of ketchup. From 1906 it was produced without preservatives. In 1907, Heinz started producing 13 million bottles of ketchup per year, exporting ketchup all over the world, including India, Australia, South America, Japan, Indonesia, New Zealand, South Korea, South Africa and the United Kingdom. Heinz ketchup is often served at restaurants in the United States and Canada, as well as many other countries. As a condiment for many foods, such as french fries, chips, hamburgers and hot dogs, Heinz ketchup uses the slogan "America's Favorite Ketchup." As of 2012, there are more than 650 million bottles of Heinz Tomato Ketchup being sold every year throughout the world.

In January 2009, the label design was altered, with the illustration of a gherkin pickle that had adorned the label since the 1890s was removed and replaced with an illustration of a vine-ripened tomato accompanied by the slogan "Upgrade To Heinz".

In a recent American Customer Satisfaction Index poll of 10,644 consumers, H.J. Heinz Co. had the highest score of any food or beverage firm, higher than Kraft, Coca-Cola, and Nestlé.

Production
Heinz manufactures all of its American tomato ketchup at two plants: one in Fremont, Ohio, and another in Muscatine, Iowa.  Heinz closed their plant in Leamington, Ontario in 2014. The former Canadian plant is now owned by Highbury Vancouver to produce French's ketchup in Canada.

Globally, Heinz produces ketchup and other tomato sauces in factories across the world , including the UK and the Netherlands.  Although Heinz touts "one basic recipe" for its mainstay ketchup, there are variations in this recipe tailored to national tastes, and dependent on the country of production.

Varieties

In addition to the standard ketchup variety, Heinz offers two varieties known as "Organic" and "Simply Heinz". Both of these varieties' ingredients contain sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup. Heinz offers several flavor variations: sriracha, jalapeño, and balsamic vinegar. Dietary requirements are addressed with no-salt-added and reduced-sugar varieties.

Edchup
On June 5, 2019, which is National Ketchup Day, Heinz, along with singer-songwriter and ketchup-lover Ed Sheeran, released a limited-edition ketchup product known as Ed Sheeran X Heinz ketchup, more popularly known by its portmanteau, “Edchup”. Heinz announced the release in an Instagram post on the same day. The post featured Sheeran posing with a bottle of “Edchup”. Ed Sheeran is a long-time ketchup lover. He made this apparent when he had the Heinz ketchup logo tattooed on his left arm.

The bottles, which were  each, were limited to 5 per order. The ketchup inside was no different than ordinary Heinz tomato ketchup. The bottle itself featured a unique label in which the title was “HEINZ TOMATO EDCHUP”. The labels of standard Heinz ketchup bottles feature a tomato hanging from its stem. On the ”Edchup” label the tomato is wearing glasses and has a leaf on the top of it which appears to be hair. The tomato on the label was designed to imitate Ed Sheeran.

EZ Squirt colored ketchup 
From 2000 to 2006, Heinz produced colored ketchup products called EZ Squirt, which were available in squeezable containers and targeted towards young children. The ketchup launched in green- and red-colored varieties, which were later joined by purple, pink, orange, teal, and blue. The Canadian version was labelled E-ZEE Squirt, most likely to reflect the difference in the way that the letter Z is pronounced in the United States and the way it is pronounced in other English-speaking countries.

Saucy Sauce product line
In April 2018, Heinz announced the release of "Mayochup", a portmanteau of mayonnaise + ketchup that is a mixture of the two sauces, because more than 500,000 users voted "yes" in a Twitter poll asking Americans if they wanted to see it in stores.  A number of Twitter users responded that such a mixture already existed as "fry sauce" and "fancy sauce". The sauce arrived on US retailers' shelves in September 2018. It attracted some media attention in May 2019 when the phrase was revealed to mean "shit-face" in the Cree language.

In March 2019, after the success of their Mayochup campaign, Heinz announced the release of two new portmanteau products to celebrate the company's 150th anniversary: "Mayomust", from mayonnaise + mustard, and "Mayocue", from mayonnaise + barbecue sauce.

In April 2019, Heinz released yet another portmanteau product, this time combining ketchup + ranch dressing to create "Kranch". The new sauce received a mixed reception online, with Newsweek saying that it "might seem as if Kranch is a flight of fancy from a drunken frat boy" but that some consumers were nevertheless interested.

In January 2020, Heinz announced "Honeyracha" combining honey + sriracha, then in February announced "Mayoracha" combining mayonnaise + sriracha.

In March 2021 Heinz unveiled three new products: "Tarchup" combining tartar sauce + ketchup, "Wasabioli" combining wasabi + aioli, and "Hanch" combining hot sauce + ranch dressing. Later in March, two more were announced: "Buffaranch" combining Buffalo sauce + ranch dressing and "Sweet Ketchili" combining ketchup + sweet chili sauce.

Packaging

Heinz ketchup is packaged in glass and plastic bottles of various sizes, as well as individual-serving condiment packets made of foil or plastic. Larger amounts of ketchup are packaged in metal cans, rigid plastic jugs, flexible plastic bags and a bag-in-box format. The larger containers can be fitted with pumps or placed into dispensers for bulk service. A bag containing  is the largest offering intended for restaurants; an IBC tote containing  is sold to food manufacturers.

In 2010, Heinz unveiled Dip & Squeeze, a new single-serve cup for dipping and squeezing, intended to eventually replace the original packets.

The Heinz Keystone Dispenser is a color-coded plastic dispensers, shaped to resemble the keystone part of the "Heinz 57" symbol, that accepts bags of condiments that include the original, low-sodium and Simply Heinz varieties of ketchup, along with several varieties of mustard, mayonnaise, ranch dressing and relish.

Glass bottles

Heinz introduced its octagonal glass bottle for the first time in 1889; the bottle was patented in 1890. While other glass bottle designs have existed, the octagonal glass bottle is still in use and is considered an "iconic" example of package design. In the United States, the glass bottle commonly used by restaurants holds  of ketchup. A small bottle containing about  of ketchup also exists for hotel room service and other situations where it is desirable to serve individual meals with a more personal or luxurious presentation than might be perceived with the foil or plastic packets associated with fast food dining.

As ketchup has high viscosity and behaves as a pseudoplastic or thixotropic liquid, dispensing from glass bottles can be difficult. Tapping the glass bottle causes the ketchup to become thinner and easier to pour. Heinz suggests, on its website, that the best place to tap the bottle is on the "57" mark.  The New York Times has also claimed that the tapping the "57" mark is the best way to cause Heinz ketchup to pour smoothly. Shaking the bottle or tapping in another place is also effective, however.

The "57" mark arises from an advertising statement that Heinz made "57 Varieties" of products. When Henry J. Heinz introduced the "57 Varieties" slogan, however, the company already made at least 60 products. The number is simply the combination of numbers Heinz and his wife considered "lucky".

The "upside-down" squeezable plastic bottle, consisting of an opaque red bottle with a wide white cap located at the bottom, was introduced as a food service product in 2002. It allows ketchup to be dispensed more easily than was possible with the glass bottle, and permits the use of more of the ketchup in the bottle, as the contents will settle on top of the dispensing valve. The "upside-down" bottle is intended to be non-refillable. A similar bottle has been introduced in several different sizes at the retail/grocery level, but without the opaque red coloring.

Merchandising 

The Heinz Ketchup logo and distinctive red color have been used in numerous licensed products. This includes clothing, mugs, pin badges and tomato-flavored cosmetics.

A Heinz Ketchup cookbook was published by Absolute Press in 2007.

In January 2020, Heinz and department store Fortnum & Mason launched tomato ketchup-filled chocolate truffles, as part of their Valentine's Day offering.

In April 2020, Heinz launched a 570-piece ketchup jigsaw puzzle, in which all of the pieces were identically red.

Counterfeiting scheme 
In 2012, a criminal scheme that repackaged bulk standard ketchup into bottles with counterfeit "Simply Heinz" labels failed when the transferred ketchup began to ferment and explode.

See also

 Dip & Squeeze
 Heinz 57

References

Further reading 
  Focuses on the reasons Heinz Tomato Ketchup dominates the ketchup market.

External links

 

1876 introductions
Brand name condiments
Heinz brands
Ketchup