A Little Innovation with Great Effect: the New Heinz Ketchup Packet!

Lynne Kiesling

Here’s an example of how a small innovation can have a substantial beneficial impact: Heinz redesigns its ketchup packets to hold three times as much ketchup, and to be squeezed or dipped. No more ketchup splurts on clothes, no more having to get three packets to get as much as you’d like, no more having to open the ketchup for your kids. And, of course, as a Pittsburgher I am doubly proud of this redesign.

Seriously. It’s little innovations like this, and like my other favorite example, the non-drip top on laundry detergent bottles, that bubble up from the market and, in aggregate, are great evidence for the plenitude of free enterprise.

The new packet is also cute, which doesn’t hurt …

9 thoughts on “A Little Innovation with Great Effect: the New Heinz Ketchup Packet!”

  1. Pingback: Central Planning Can’t Keep Up – or Ketchup

  2. Fat Man, you are such a buzz kill! And in fact, if you read their description, Heinz has reduced the sodium content of the ketchup, although it does still have corn syrup, as you state. But if you are consuming enough ketchup for those corn syrup calories to have a meaningful effect on your diet, you have a ketchup problem and need to be cut off …

  3. This is good, but it doesn’t come close to the revolution of the upside down ketchup container. That was brilliant. Was that Heinz’s doing or somebody else?

  4. cornsyrup isn’t the only issue…what about all that plastic that’s going to end up in landfills? couldn’t they have designed something that’s better for the environment?

  5. With regard to Fat Man’s comment, from the same press release linked in Lynne’s original article:

    Heinz also is extending its range of lifestyle-driven products available in retail to include Simply Heinz Tomato Ketchup, which is made with sugar, instead of high fructose corn sweetener.

    If that line is successful, it’s reasonable to expect that single-use packets would be made available to restaurants who believe their patrons care about such things.

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