"Heinz" news and stories

Heinz is rolling out a new ketchup container to replace their ubiquitous little packets, and Chick-fil-A is celebrating the new "Dip & Squeeze" ketchup by offering free waffle fries to customers tomorrow from 2-4 p.m. During the two-hour window, it's "Free FryDay:" All you have to do is ask for a Heinz Dip & Squeeze ketchup at the counter and they'll hand over a medium waffle fries to go with it.

But while the free fries are nice, we're way more excited about this ketchup innovation: We can't believe it's taken a ketchup company so long to make a ketchup container that you can dip your fries into. It may be a small luxury, but we'll take it.

• Read about Heinz's new green ketchup bottles at The Huffington Post.

You may find the coming summer months taste a little...different. Just after the FDA announced its plans to limit salt in processed foods, Heinz has given word that it's tweaking the recipe for its iconic ketchup -- and the new bottles will hit stores this summer. The company, which has not changed this ketchup recipe in 40 years, believes the new formula -- which contains 15 percent less sodium -- will be as popular as the old version, according to the AP. And that's very popular indeed -- the brand corners about 60 percent of the ketchup market. But some customers are expressing doubt.

"Leave the ketchup alone," one Brooklynite said to the New YorkPost. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Another, an octogenarian who's been eating Heinz ketchup for most of his life, lamented in the same article: "I haven't died yet. It's really hard for me to eat without salt. I think it's infringing on our rights!"

Marketing strategists are surely thinking back to the days of New Coke, a massive PR failure, but the Heinz ketchup reformulation has some important differences. For one thing, the catalyst for the change would appear not to be PR but rather public health. Spokeswoman Jessica Jackson told the Post that the company was keeping "the needs of our consumers and our commitment to health and wellness" in mind. The other major difference is the lack of a glitzy ad campaign. Bottles containing the new recipe will have no hint on the label; customers will have to look at the nutritional data in order to tell the difference. (Or, maybe, just taste it.)

Anyone who's ever tried to eat French fries in the car or has squeezed packet after messy packet of ketchup onto a burger knows that those little condiment packages can be annoying (and sometimes impossible to open at all).

Heinz feels our pain. For the first time in decades, the ketchup company is revamping the way it packages ketchup on-the-go, the Associated Press reported.

Heinz has created the Dip & Squeeze package, a single-serving ketchup packet that has a cup for dipping and an end that can be torn off, making it easier to both dip and squeeze with less mess.

"The packet has long been the bane of our consumers," David Ciesinski, vice president of Heinz Ketchup, told the AP. "The biggest complaint is there is no way to dip and eat it on the go."

The packet also holds three times as much ketchup as the traditional Heinz ketchup packet.

Spotted Dick. Photo: Slashfood.

A Welsh municipality has renamed a British pudding because workers tired of the snickers caused from its double-entendre name.

Spotted Dick is now Spotted Richard on the menu in the government cafeteria in the North Wales town of Flintshire, the Daily Mail reports.

"It just seemed political correctness gone mad," Klaus Armstrong-Braun, a local politician told the Daily Mail. "There was a sign in the dining room for things like rice pudding and then this Spotted Richard -- I had to ask what it was. Whoever has changed it needs to be told they are being silly."

What do you do when times are tough? Reinvention! Tropicana (and Pepsi) have already done it, and now Heinz is getting in on the action.

Gone are the days when the tasty gherkin graced the label. Did you ever notice it? The gherkin has shrunk over the years, once looking quite hefty (look to the right), and now an almost-forgotten blip at the bottom of the label. Blip or not, it's been on the bottles for over 100 years, and now Heinz Ketchup is trading it in for a "vine-ripened tomato" and a new tagline: "Grown not made."

I get the switch, since nothing about a gherkin makes you think of ketchup, but does it really matter? Does putting a vine-ripened tomato on the label make a difference? I guess I'm just crusty about everything continually changing to look modern. Old isn't necessarily bad. Remember the wave of nostalgia that came with those old Coke bottles? Poor gherkin. Couldn't the pickle and tomato just share?