It might be counterintuitive to think that Romanians are extorted into paying more money for ketchup than any other civilized nation in our small world; yet, it’s entirely true. With a people whose median income is a scant 335€ (USD$430), what could possibly motivate attempts to foist such highway robbery? Greed. And it’s surprisingly effective, too.

To set the baseline, let us posit to our Romanian friends that paying for ketchup as a fast food condiment is ludicrous. For most of restauranting history, free ketchup has been the norm for patrons. Originally, ketchup usage was literally unmetered as customers were properly taken care of with bottles of ketchup at diner tables or a pump dispenser in a central location of the restaurant.

At some point, sanitation concerns thrust the lowly ketchup packet front and center to become ubiquitous across America and the rest of the free world to protect us all from germs and pranksters. With our immediate health needs met and tomato sauce in abundant supply, the restauranteurs unwittingly released a new era of teenage tomfoolery based on the explosive nature of the packaging.

Today, ketchup remains free in the United States and parts of Western Europe, but not without mild restrictions. In the late 1990s, McDonald’s infamously began restricting the amount of ketchup distributed per order to only two packets. If you had 3 burgers and 4 fries, that didn’t affect the rigid policy of the stingy ketchup nazi. I distinctly remember this new aspect of fast food being a common topic of discussion among a wide number of people who were equally miffed about the snub.

Shortly thereafter, McDonald’s didn’t just give you the packets automatically but decided to ask you if you even wanted any. For once theory and practice met on even ground as consumers were able to get ketchup, but the companies were able to save money by not dispensing unwanted ketchup and also got the bonus of lying to environmentalists about how this new procedure was created expressly to reduce their waste footprint.

The side effect was that beancounters at McDonald’s began to calculate the amount of money saved annually by both asking before giving and reducing the amount given. That’s when things started getting ugly. Next, McDonald’s stopped asking. Why prompt the customer to steal from their profits? If the fast food buyer really wanted ketchup all that bad, they’d be sure to ask for it.

The problem was when you’re used to getting free ketchup from all the various fast food places, you invariably forget to ask McDonald’s. They saved big time! Many an unhappy customer arrived home from the drivethru to find, much to their shock, that no ketchup had been given for the fries. Cutting their costs in the short run (not just in ketchup, but also in soft drink rip-offs and other areas) began to eat into their long-term picture.

What’s amazing is how the other companies kept giving the customers full service, while their respective Boards of Directors went nuts from jealousy over McDonald’s cost savings. In the 2004, floods in California precipitated a whole tomato shortage which gave fast food purveyors precisely the deceitful pretense needed to mimic their archrival because the ADD media-watching public never understood that the shortage did not apply to processed tomatoes products. Thusly, the ketchup lockdown has spread.

It’s true that McDonald’s continues to toe the hard line of enforcing an arbitrary lack of ketchup in the United States today. But, if you ask, you will be given two tiny packets for free. Other fast food places will give you more than two, provided you beg hard enough and the employee is feeling rebellious toward his shift supervisor. But they’re still free and you can get more than two. Of course, there still exist — if not commonly — restaurants where you can pretty much get any reasonable number of packets that you like all for free.

If you want to inject realism, then we can all agree the ketchup was never really free. Its tiny cost has always been included in the price of food (probably less than a penny per meal), just like rent and electricity are figured in. But when those companies try to take the ketchup away, many consumers get a bit worked up about it.

Now, contrast that with reports of McDonald’s charging 17 cents for ketchup in Ukraine (not exactly a hub of wealth, at the moment) or 20 euro cents in Germany. Suddenly, the fast food places are not reducing their cost but actually acheiving a huge windfall of profit at the loss of the hapless customer. Of course, no one cries out in these countries where they never knew the simple courtesy of providing the last ingredient to a meal.

Let’s take a look at the crimes of McDonald’s in Romania.

Shamefully, the world’s most popular restaurant gouges the customer for a full RON per packet. That’s 28 eurocent (Americans, 36 cents) for a sachet of ketchup. In a nation that’s not yet walking on streets of gold, it’s tantamount to reprehensible immorality. In fact, the price of 3 or packets of ketchup is the same, if not more than, the price of McDonald’s french fries. That, my friends, is scandalous.

How much ketchup is in there? Well, the ketchup from Ron’s Steakhouse says it holds 14 grams. Meanwhile a typical bottle of Tomi ketchup in Romania holds 500 grams and sells for roughly 3,5 RON. There’s approximately the equivalent of some 35 or more packets of ketchup in a standard bottle. If we do the math, that means Mickey D’s is hijacking its Romanian customers with the outrageous price of 35 RON! Yes, while free in America, McDonald’s Romania charges 10€ (or nearly USD$13) for a bottle of ketchup!

And there you have it. The priciest ketchup on the entire planet is right here in poor little Romania. I have to imagine that McDonald’s executives really slap one another on the back when mulling over their success with this disgraceful doosie of marketing to a captive audience. It certainly assures no one will be cleaning their pennies.

I love ketchup. Always have. My disappointment with the overly sugared tomato paste that passes for ketchup in Romania has driven me to actually start making my own tastier ketchup at home, which lets me appreciate just how inexpensive it is to create ketchup (let alone if you buy in obscene bulk amounts like the big boys). But don’t look at me too funny for cooking my own ketchup, because I could have told you how to make your own Big Mac.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 9th, 2006 at 11:59 pm and is filed under Business, Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.