Thanks ROBB. It looks like I still have some work to do. Thank god I’m not a lawyer.
And just to show that I’m flexible, I’ll amend my original statement and say that ketchup only goes with french fries AND hamburgers, unless you’re a psycho! But with hamburgers, you still need another condiment such as mustard, mayonnaise or relish. Ketchup alone doesn’t cut it.
I can’t believe that people are putting the stuff on pizza, potato chips, eggs and hot dogs. Yuck!
If I owned a restaurant or diner, I’d only allow Heinz ketchup to be used for french fries and hamburgers. If someone wants ketchup on anything else, they get Hunt’s or Kraft.
You’re welcome Jackknifed. I think you’ve asked a good question, which means it will take some work to get a completely satisfactory answer. Part of what unfair competition laws try to prevent, is for one person to get business by fooling customers into thinking they are buying a different product than they are buying. There must be cases out there somewhere on how using someone else’s packaging is wrong. I like the wrinkle about a restuarant doing it, because it adds a different player. In your question, it seems that you have Evil Restaurant Owner[sup]TM[/sup], rather than Evil Off-Brand Ketchup Manufacturer[sup]TM[/sup]. Thus, you’ve changed the normal cast of characters and changed the financial motive.
I think you friend made an interesting point refering to trademark dilution, for this situation does devalue the brand ‘Heinz’[sup]TM[/sup]. But, I think that dilution requites steering consumers towards a different brand, so I think your question would need to involve some facts that suggested consumers could tell whose ketchup it really is.
I have a hard time believing that Tengu was totally ignored by the rest of you litigous curs and food snobs.
Haven’t you ever looked at a Heinz ketchup bottle in restaurants? On the label it says in fine print “for institutional use only.” Yes, Heinz specifically sells ketchup bottles for restaurants. And they also sell refills in large cans. The bottles come in cases, cause they’re always getting broken and dirty and crusty.
In fact, Heinz became one of the leading brands precisely because they marketed to restaurant distributors, and got their bottle placed on tables and handled by everyone, making using the product a familiar thing for a large fraction of the population. Brilliant.
I turned a ketchup bottle over and all of this watery red stuff spilled out of it onto my crispy fries, which soon turned them into soggy fries. Then one of my friends told me that just because the bottle says HEINZ doesn’t mean that it’s really Heinz. Being the laid back person I am, I didn’t complain. I just thought about it and then posted it. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.
Yeah sure. Next thing you’ll be putting ketchup on Filet Mignon and then on lobster, and then on Chilean Sea Bass. Jeez. Maybe we need to ban ketchup. Well not completely since we’ll still need it for Russian dressing and for McDonald’s special sauce. We’ll just have to ban it in its pure form.
I like my fries better with honey mustard anyway. Even salt & vinegar are better on fries than ketchup.
Ketchup…only on fries? What do you put on your fried eggs, your meatloaf, your cheeseburgers, your mac’n cheese? I can’t have man’n cheese without the wonderful zing of some catsup! And to add to the pleasure…a heaping serving of black pepper.
Trademark dilution does not require steering a consumer to another brand. In fact, if you think about it, “dilution” means a lessening of the mark’s association in the mind of consumer with “quality.”
You can dilute a mark by, say, filling the “Heinz” bottle with watered-down tomato juice and bacon fat, thereby causing consumers in the restaurant to conclude that Heinz ketchup (or is it catsup?) is nasty tasting, and in the future, they’re switching to some other brand.
My two cents here are a bit off topic but may be relevant when disseminating which ketchup is “authentic” Heinz, but does anyone remembered a 20/20 or 60 minutes (way back in the 80’s) about government waste where they exposed a government office - I believe it was under the auspices of the Agriculture Department, where they spent millions of tax dollars exploring specific viscosities of - you guessed it - ketchup?
Yes, I know this was a run-on sentence but if I had stopped, I don’t think I would have been able to start again!
First of all, it is perfectly acceptable to eat ketchup on meatloaf. By god, that’s the way it should be! However, I’ve only ever eaten homemade ketchup on meatloaf, which is prepared for consumption with the meatloaf and nothing else. Normal ketchup can really drown out a food’s flavor, so this homemade ketchup is a bit…sweeter. Different consistency, too. Secondly, ketchup on hotdogs is a sin to anyone who knows a good hotdog. It dominates all the other flavors that should be on there, such as onions, mustard and saurkraut. Furthermore, coming from someone in the know, the new Heinz ketchup bottles are indeed meant to cut down on that awful ketchup water (which actually has a scientific name! I’ll look it up tomorrow and let you all know) and to keep restaurants from refilling the bottles, which happens all the time and is indeed illegal. Finally, here’s one for free: the best place to eat ketchup is in England, where companies are required to put more tomatoes into the ketchup for it to be legally classified as ketchup. And oh yeah-the Herr’s ketchup potato chips are frigging wonderful! However, they are only new to the states; Canada’s had them for years. The ketchup-and-salsa combo released a few years ago, on the other hand, was not wonderful.
Sigh… take notes and pay attention:
Fried eggs should be flavored ONLY with Tabasco brand hot sauce.
Meatloaf requires a good smoky barbecue sauce.
Cheeseburgers can receive either barbecue sauce OR salsa.
Mac n’ Cheese should have a good salsa MIXED in with it after the cheese, milk, and butter have been added.
Fried eggs should not be flavored with anything. They should, however, be done sunny side up so you can stick your toast in the yolk, which should merely be warmed up and remain runny. Since most places can’t get a sunny side up egg right for some reason, it’s sometimes safer to get “over easy”. Ketchup on 'em - bleh!
Then again, originally coming from Western PA, I’m more than happy to support Heinz as the one true ketchup, but I’ll let you in on a little secret … I don’t like ketchup much. Spelling it catsup doesn’t improve it, and, in fact, suggests some kind of unfortunate feline association. If condimenting my own food, I won’t be able to tell you whether the ketchup is watery or not because I won’t use it. I will be able to tell you about the quality of the mustard, and handing somebody a hotdog without providing pickle relish is an offense before the condiment deities.
Fries should get malt vinegar. These days, most of them need salt, to.
