Photo: @MSG, Flickr.
No, no and no. Judging from the amount of care expended, there's nothing restaurants value quite so highly as ketchup.
Say a table orders two rounds of onion rings and a single serving of fries. By the end of the meal, those grease-happy diners will likely have burned through half a bottle of ketchup. But that bottle won't reappear in its half-empty state, nor will it be topped off from the giant bladder bag of ketchup that's a fixture on most restaurant kitchen walls. Instead, a server will slowly pour the vestigial ketchup into another under-filled ketchup bottle, creating one full bottle (and one bottle bound for the dish room).
Marrying ketchup is standard practice at every restaurant where ketchup is consumed, which – at least in this country – means every restaurant, period. With the almost imperceptible exception of hoity-toity places that make their own ketchup and serve it in ramekins, American restaurants rely on 10-ounce Heinz ketchup bottles – and expect their servers to keep said bottles looking fresh.
While the Internet is lousy with urban legends about the dangers of married ketchup, transferring ketchup from one bottle to another doesn't seem to actually pose any health hazards. But, much like cutting lemon wedges, the routine represents a colossal waste of server time that could be better spent learning more about new items on the menu or actually waiting on guests.
Collecting, marrying and cleaning ketchup bottles can take upwards of 20 minutes, depending on a restaurant's size. If that doesn't sound like much of a time commitment, imagine waiting an extra 20 minutes for your entrée. In restaurant time, 20 minutes is an eternity.
I have no quarrel with server side work. I strongly believe front-of-the-house staff should take responsibility for a restaurant's cleanliness and appearance. I'll happily roll silverware all night long. But I'm not sure who benefits when a server is dedicating five percent of her shift to an activity many customers find suspect.
What do you think? Have you ever had a meal ruined by a half-filled bottle of ketchup? Is marrying ketchup a worthwhile task?
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