Will Sriracha ketchup cause confusion or help sales?

Does your hot sauce have a particular name or image associated with it that needs to be preserved? If so, it’s important to create hot sauce labels that keep the customer interested if others attempt to emulate it. One of the most popular spicy condiments of recent years has been the Sriracha sauce produced by Huy Fong Foods, and CNN reported last month that Heinz is now producing a “sriracha ketchup” that plays off this brand.

Although this new product uses the “cap-on-the-bottom” bottle style associated with Heinz tomato ketchup, it also incorporates an image of a red chili pepper into the new label posted front and center on the container, as well as the red and green colors associated with the most well-known Sriracha sauce bottle.

This certainly isn’t the first “spin-off” food to take advantage of this flavor to increase customer interest. However, since the ketchup is a red sauce with a similar audience to that of the original Sriracha, there is potential for label confusion among those who don’t know the difference.

On the other hand, as Roberto Ferdman writes for the Washington Post, there could be some positive effects as well. While he contends that the ketchup represents a loss of “coolness” for the official Sriracha brand, he also acknowledges the potential for Huy Fong to expand their audience.

“In some ways, it can be seen as a form of free advertising: Many people who might not have heard of the hot sauce will soon wonder what Sriracha is, Google the name, and find out,” he writes. “Some people who try the ketchup first might prefer it, many might not.”

Using proper design and printing tools, as well as label applicators for bottle-based products, companies can make their hot sauces get correctly recognized on store shelves.