Could your customers really tell if it wasn’t Heinz Tomato Ketchup? Heinz Foodservice put this question to consumers eating out of home and the answer was yes (1), paving the way for a new £2m campaign to shout about the fact that, when it comes to ketchup, it has to be Heinz. The oldest cafe in south London, one of the stars of the campaign’s forthcoming TV advert, couldn’t agree more and has witnessed some unusual displays of love for the brand since it opened in 1927...
Lights, camera, ketchup
With its retro 1930s interior and a splash of the sixties for good measure, Gambardella Cafe in Vanbrugh Park, Blackheath, has become a bit of a star in its own right over the years.
Look closer at this year’s hit comedy The Boat that Rocked, starring Bill Nighy and Kenneth Branagh, and ITV drama series, The Fixer, and the cafe is there in all its chrome, flesh coloured vitrolite and red and black Formica glory.
This is no Michelin starred restaurant and doesn’t claim to be, but proper cafes like Gambardella are an institution, creative enclaves which ‘brought European vibrancy to Britain's deflated postwar social, artistic and commercial scene’(2).
Sounds glamorous but what makes places like Gambardella, hailed one of the best vintage formica ‘caffs’ in London by website Classic Cafes, so special is their ordinariness. A place to be anonymous, watch the world turn, get some good, honest grub. No pretensions.
Ask Jools Holland, who, before moving away, loved nothing more than to pull up a moulded plywood revolving chair at Gambardella’s and tuck into egg and toast.
There is also real customer service, not automated responses. In Gambardella’s case, you get a true Italian welcome from owners James and Alex Petrillo, whose grandfather Andrew Gambardella and former ice cream maker from Naples opened the cafe in 1927. Uncle Nicholas then took over in the 1960s before passing it on to his nephews.
It’s for these reasons Gambardella was picked as an authentic backdrop for the forthcoming new Heinz Tomato Ketchup TV advert, which celebrates the many iconic ways we enjoy the classic brand in and out of home. There is one thing missing, however. The bottle.
As the main thrust of the £2m campaign, jointly run by Heinz Foodservice and its retail division, viewers see different people from different generations patting, squeezing and scraping an invisible sauce from an invisible bottle onto delicious meals.
Instinctively, however, we are left in no doubt that it could only be Heinz Tomato Ketchup, the end strap line being: “It has to be Heinz”.
Heinz with lamb’s heart, anyone?
As a staunch fan of Heinz Tomato Ketchup for over 80 years, Gambardella was a perfect candidate for the advert, screened in June with another airing scheduled for August.
“As such an important brand at the time, I’m certain our family would have used Heinz in the early years and our uncle always used Heinz in the 1960s,” said James, who works front of house, while Alex beavers away in the kitchen. “We followed on with this tradition.”
As for the types of dishes that are treated to a good dollop of Heinz Tomato Ketchup at Gambardella, they are not always what you might imagine.
“We do a lot of full breakfasts, bacon, eggs, the works, which naturally go hand in hand with Heinz Tomato Ketchup. We have, however, seen it used in plenty of unusual ways over the years,” he said.
“We have lots of regulars from the older generation who love lamb’s heart, for example, and we’ve seen Heinz poured on this. We’ve also had customers cover toast with it, salads and even spaghetti. Anything goes really. Customers truly love Heinz Tomato Ketchup and you can’t give them a cheap imitation.”
James and Alex are now hoping for some Italian luck to help them win up to £10,000 in Heinz Foodservice’s ‘It has to be Heinz’ promotion for caterers. Caterers simply have to keep their eyes peeled for the 3,500 Heinz Tomato Ketchup iconic 342g glass bottles being sent out with a special ‘prize winner’ gold label on the back.
If they find a winning label, caterers need to text the unique code on the label back to Heinz Foodservice to find out the prize they have won. There are 10 lots of £10,000 up for grabs, a host of other cash prizes, as well as Merlin Entertainment annual passes and lottery tickets.
Brand manager for Heinz Foodservice, Jennifer Harker, said the campaign aimed to reinforce the message that Heinz Tomato Ketchup is the original and the best across the board (3).
“The caterer promotion, rewarding caterers for their loyalty, links directly to the TV adverts, which show how Heinz Tomato Ketchup is enjoyed by different people, in different occasions and on different food, even though the bottle isn’t actually there,” she said. “The idea is that, just because you don’t see it, there’s no doubt that it is Heinz Tomato Ketchup.
“What we’ve discovered is that while credit crunch Britons are willing to switch their supermarket, they are not prepared to stop buying their favourite Tomato Ketchup, and, because of the strength of the brand, this has a direct impact on foodservice. Heinz Tomato Ketchup has been part of many consumers’ lives everyday since childhood, and is a brand we know and trust, whether at home, at a cafe, restaurant or in the pub.”
For more information on Gambardella, open 8am-5pm Monday-Friday and Saturday 8am-2pm, call 0208 8580327. For more on the Heinz Foodservice range, call the customer care line free on 0800 575755.
References
1. Heinz Out of Home Condiment Survey 2007
2. Classic Cafes website
3. In a Heinz poll, 44 percent of people said that they always buy Heinz Tomato Ketchup instead of a supermarket’s own brand version, regardless of price, and respondents considered Heinz Tomato Ketchup the number one brand that they can’t do without - Source: Heinz research carried out by the UK consumer site uSwitch