Saw these cute spider donuts.
Chicken tenders, asparagus and veggie balls from Trader Joe’s
Turns out that with restaurants opening up and lack of supply from the main ketchup producer, Heinz, there's a national shortage of the red stuff. Some highlights that caught my attention:
The pandemic turned many sit-down restaurants into takeout specialists, making individual ketchup packets the primary condiment currency for both national chains and mom-and-pop restaurants. Packet prices are up 13% since January 2020, and their market share has exploded at the expense of tabletop bottles, according to restaurant-business platform Plate IQ.
The ketchup conundrum strikes at a cornerstone of American diets. The tomato spread is the most-consumed table sauce at U.S. restaurants, with around 300,000 tons sold to food-service last year, according to research firm Euromonitor. Even more is eaten at home, and the pandemic helped push retail ketchup sales in the U.S. over $1 billion in 2020, around 15% higher than 2019, Euromonitor data showed.
Kraft Heinz Co. is ketchup’s king, with the research firm saying Heinz holds nearly 70% of the U.S. retail market for the condiment. But the more than 150-year-old brand wasn’t prepared for the pandemic.Source: WSJ
This is my first post. Going forward, I plan to write all about the condiments that I come across and give each a rating.
Stay tuned. More to come.