CHICAGO — There are some Chicago restaurants that will show you the door if you ask for ketchup.
But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Heinz is helping out ketchup-loving Chicagoans by putting up small billboards that dispense the condiment outside famous local restaurants that refuse to serve ketchup.
Passersby will be able to smack a ketchup bottle attached to the boards, and packets of Heinz ketchup will fall out, according to a Heinz news release. The dispensers go up Tuesday and will be available through April 9 outside the Wieners Circle, 2622 N. Clark St., and by Navy Pier, among other spots, a Heinz spokesperson said.
Chicagoans can also nominate restaurants that don’t serve Heinz ketchup to get one of the boards on SmackForHeinz.com when the site goes live Tuesday.
Heinz is known for crafty campaigns to get Chicagoans to eat ketchup. In 2017, it introduced “Chicago Dog Sauce” — which looked, smelled and tasted just like ketchup — for that year’s National Hot Dog Day.
Chicago has long had a jokingly adversarial relationship with the condiment. It’s a time-honored tradition to rib people who put ketchup on hot dogs, and some restaurants honor the history by refusing to offer ketchup or lovingly kicking out people who request it on their dog.
“We’re all for ketchup — up to the age of decision,” Tom McGlade, then a spokesman and vice president for Vienna Beef, said in 2017.
Vienna Beef thinks you should knock off that ketchup-y kid stuff after you’re 17.
“The history of the Chicago-style hot dog never included that. Tomatoes are already on the hot dog, which is a more natural form of that vegetable, anyway,” McGlade said back then. “Just the combination of sweet and salty, cold and hot [on a Chicago dog], we believe it’s the perfect combination — and ketchup is not one of the ingredients we put on them.”
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