Published Sunday, February 24, 2013

Billionaire Buffett now ketchup king

Warren E. Buffett’s conglomerate is buying food giant, H.J. Heinz for about $23 billion, adding ketchup to its lineup of prominent brands.

Some may wonder why the billionaire is buying up all the ketchup.

It could be because of ketchup’s universal appeal: Ketchup is a variation of catsup, but no matter what you call it, most would say this add-on treat which is applied to so many different dishes exceeds others in popularity.

I have never seen the results of an actual survey, but one convincing statistic is that Heinz says it sells 650 million bottles a year.

Wow! That’s a whole lot of ketchup.

Which is a good indication that ketchup is as popular as the food it goes on. And there is no doubt it improves the taste in our mouths.

Unless a restaurant is fortunate enough to have several bottles of ketchup, or one for every table, the single bottle will be passed around more often than a newborn baby at a family reunion.

I don’t really know how the annual sales of bottles of ketchup compare to the sales of bottles of intoxicants.

However, I am certain that there seems to be fewer complications when some make a decision and stick to it.

As one good old boy said, “The only bottle I hit, with any degree of regularity, is a bottle of ketchup.”