We love a good home grown story and this one in particular changed the ketchup market in Canada. When a man named Brian Fernandez from Orillia wrote a Facebook post urging his followers to use Leamington, Ontario based French’s Tomato Ketchup he ignited a dialogue across Canada about the importance of supporting local and automatically switched thousands of Canadians ketchup brand of choice.
When Fernandez posted this educational post, that we’ve aptly titled “Bye. Bye. Heinz,” he unearthed the story behind French’s ketchup and was introduced to the power of social media. It wasn’t until Buzzfeed contacted Fernandez that he realized the true virality of his post. Commenters across the country were pledging allegiance to the brand because of his story. As you can imagine, since the post went viral, French’s ketchup has been flying off the shelves even causing controversy with Loblaw’s PC branded ketchup.
The company is in hustle mode now, demand increased immediately by 400% and now is working hard to get its product on grocery store shelves across the country.
In June of 2014, Heinz pulled out of their production facility in Leamington, Ontario. Leaving 740 locals without jobs and an entire century of history behind. Not only did Heinz produce their ketchup product in the farming community but also sourced their all of their tomatoes from local farmers.
Fast forward to January of 2015, when French’s (a mustard brand staple) joined forces with Highbury-Canco to start producing their own line of ketchup at the at the production facility using local and southwestern Ontario tomatoes to make tomato paste.
This viral post is an incredible example of social change through social media, a grassroots idea transformed into a national conversation that is now changing the condiment market in Canada.