Ketchup Shortage Plaguing Restaurant Industry

We survived the great toilet paper shortage of 2020, but can we make it through the devastating ketchup shortage of 2021 without completely losing it?

If you're one of those people who puts ketchup on literally everything (and you know who you are) this may bring you to tears. According to multiple news outlets ketchup, one of the most commonly used condiments in the United States, is in short supply.

In fact, while some major restaurant are already limiting the number of packets that customers can take, other chains like Long John Silver's and Texas Roadhouse have even resorted to outsourcing their ketchup orders to secondary providers because the normal channels can't keep up. Let's hope Whataburger has a good supplier, their ketchup is hard to beat.

According to Today.com the reason for the shortage is largely our own fault. During the pandemic we placed a lot more take-out and delivery orders and they all came with a handful of tiny ketchup packets. All of those packets going out the door created an increased demand for the tiny servings and that has run the price up. (You did save your unused packets didn't you?)

Steve Cornell, the president of Enhancers, Specialty and Away from Home Business Unit for Kraft Heinz says the company is working hard to keep up with the demand and has plans for new production lines that will increase production by about 25%. That's about 12 billion little ketchup packets a year. Let's all hope they get them online soon.

Hopefully this will all be sorted out before I run out of the packets I have stashed in my refrigerator from earlier orders. I'm not sure how many more shortages I can handle.