it seems all the restaurnts in california have changed to plastic ketchup bottles in the last six months


Same here in North Carolina, although it's been longer than 6 months. Are they also the opaque plastic bottles in CA, too? So that no one can see when they're getting empty, which means that they always are? That really pisses me off. (And I doubt that it's a health thing. I imagine that Heinz just started offering restaurant plastic packs less expensively than glass.)

Time to chime in with my restaurant knowledge...

Many places are starting to use the plastic bottles for three reasons:

1. Marketing and appeal. A nice "full" bottle looks much better than an old used glass bottle with nasty "someone just put their used knife in there to get some ketchup out" stuff running down the sides.
2. Ease of use. Shake. Squeeze. Thats about it. No more waiting for 3 hours for yummy red "food".
3. Safety. The tops don't come off these things. Thus preventing restaurants from "marrying" the ketchups together, when one gets low and the other is just about full.

Yeah its nasty I know, but quite a common practice. Image, if you will, what happens to that little bit of ketchup (left out in room temp all the time too) that keeps getting "married" from one bottle to the next and never used. For weeks.

It's called fermenting. Then some sorry sack comes along and gets a burger. He's so hungry and all the burger needs is a bit of ketchup to make it perfect. He slowly unscrews the top...

BOOM!!! (ok, more like a loud pop, but you get the picture) ketchup everywhere. I've seen it happen on more than one occasion. Not a very pleasant thing.

mmmm...smelly death ketchup....