From the now I’ve seen just about everything dept:

The Birmingham Mail continues their coverage of the Save Our Sauce campaign which has recently taken on a unique twist!

A Birmingham pub as developed a special Save Our Sauce beer in support of HP Sauce. The Save Our Sauce ale, which was developed to “look and taste” as close as possible to ‘the Sauce’ is now on sale at the Wellington in Bennetts Hill. The ale is brewed to not only match the colour of HP Sauce but also its fruitiness!

Read the full story here.

The Recipe:

Last week I received an email from an anonymous HP Foods employee informing me of the impending changes by Heinz to not only move the production of HP Sauce but to change the recipe itself. I was somewhat distraught over this news and I quickly wrote up a blog entry to which I hoped to rouse the emotions of fellow HP Sauce lovers. I later wrote “From My Perspective” where I stated that if this information were correct, the implications of such a decision to change the HP Sauce recipe would affect us all, not only those in the West Midlands area. Again my intentions were to bring out the passions of those who treasure HP Sauce as I do. Fortunately for all of us, the information I received that Heinz intends to change the recipe has since been proven to be incorrect.

I have received word from my “source” at HP Foods that this rumour simply is not true. My “source” tells me that Heinz’s intentions are to precisely replicate the recipe in Holland and mass produce it from that facility. Afterall, would it make sense to have paid 480 million for the brand only to change the recipe? Probably not. There will be however changes in supply of things like sugar, tomatoes and dates etc, to which Heinz already has its own suppliers.

My appologies for contributing to spreading rumours that simply were not true. My own “quick to believe the worst” frame of mind got the better of me.

The Boycott:

Chris Haden has an update regarding the boycott effort with a perspective from Premier Foods. For those of us who don’t know Premier Foods, they own Crosse & Blackwell, HP Baked Beans and Cadburys Drinking Chocolate among others. Chris recently spoke with a spokesperson regarding purchases of non-Heinz products from Premier Foods. Chris was informed that Premier Foods has recently received a giant order for Branston Ketchup from the UK’s largest supermarket chain, Tesco. Premier Foods also supplies ASDA, Sainsburys and Morrisons.

“The feeling i got from them was that the boycott must already be taking effect and would force them to rethink the closure. This might be wishfull thinking on my behalf, but talking to people and checking supermarket shelves, it would appear localy, customers are hoarding HP Sauce and snubbing Heinz. Just hope this is Nationwide.” - Chris Haden

Let’s hope Chris is right and Heinz is getting the message! Still, save us a pint of SOS ale won’t you Chris?

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 28th, 2006 at 9:41pm. 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.