Supply chain problems are reaching a distant corner of the business world: ketchup packages.
After enduring a year of closings, employee safety fears and start-stop openings, American restaurants now face a shortage of ketchup across the country. Restaurants are trying to secure staple food after Covid-19 overthrew the condiment world order. Managers are using generic versions, pouring ketchup in bulk into individual cups and going to Costco aisles in search of substitutes.
“We have been hunting from top to bottom,” said Chris Fuselier, owner of the Denver-based Blake Street Tavern, which has struggled to keep ketchup in stock for most of this year.
The pandemic has transformed many service-based restaurants into take-out food specialists, making individual ketchup packages the primary condiment currency for both national chains and family restaurants. Package prices have risen 13% since January 2020, and their market share has exploded at the expense of table bottles, according to the Plate IQ restaurant business platform.
Even the fast-food giants are begging for packages. Long John Silver’s LLC, a chain of almost 700 units, had to seek ketchup from secondary suppliers due to increased demand. The industry’s pandemic shift to packages has raised prices, costing the Louisville, Ky.-Based company an extra half a million dollars, executives said, since the single service is more expensive than wholesale.