In terms of politics, ketchup in thick of it

W Ketchup is being bottled by the Fremont Co. for a group of Republicans from New York. HO Enlarge

A nearly 100-year-old ketchup bottling company based in Fremont is producing one of the spiciest novelties of the 2004 presidential election: W Ketchup.

"You don't support Democrats. Why should your ketchup?" is the slogan for W Ketchup, which calls itself "America's Ketchup."

It is labeled and sold by a group of friends - all Republicans in their 20s and 30s - who thought up W Ketchup at a cookout in April in upstate New York's Eagle Bridge.

"We just kind of looked down at the ketchup bottle on the table and said, 'Oh my God, we're shooting money to Teresa,'●" said Bill Zachary, chairman of W Ketchup and a New York City banker. The fortune of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, is linked to Heinz Ketchup.

The ketchup those friends, who include another banker and a lawyer, are selling is made by the Fremont Co., which is based in Fremont and operates a ketchup bottling plant in Mercer County's Rockford, directly south of Van Wert.

W Ketchup is named for Washington County, N.Y., where the friends are from, not President Bush, who is known for his middle initial, W., which distinguishes him from his father, former President George H.W. Bush, Mr. Zachary said.

But the ketchup was formed to compete with Heinz Ketchup because Mr. Kerry had leveraged some of his wife's millions for his campaign against President Bush, which Mr. Zachary and his friends hope is unsuccessful.

On the W Ketchup Web site, W chief executive Dan Oliver says, "As patriotic Americans, we were tired of seeing part of the profits from our barbecues redirected to Teresa Heinz Kerry and her liberal causes. Big companies think they can grease the wheels in Washington by giving to both parties, so we decided to start a little company that wouldn't give to Democrats."

The W Ketchup label has a picture of George Washington and Revolutionary War soldiers, the words "God Bless America," a bald eagle, and the American flag. It lists the Fremont Co. as the bottler, which is not done by most of the grocery-store brands the Fremont Co. produces.

The decision to include the Fremont Co. appears to be in part because W Ketchup's label says in numerous spots the ketchup is made in the USA.

"It's going like gangbusters," said Chris Smith, marketing director of the Fremont Co., which also makes barbecue sauce and sauerkraut.

That's relatively speaking, of course. W Ketchup has sold about 150,000 of its 24-ounce bottles, Mr. Zachary said. the Fremont Co. produces more than 25 million bottles a year for 20 labels, including brands for groceries such as Kroger and Aldi. And H.J. Heinz Co. sells hundreds of millions of bottles a year, Mr. Smith said.

W Ketchup LLC is making money, Mr. Zachary said. On its Web site, wketchup.com, it prices a minimum order of four bottles at $12. That's $3 for a bottle that costs less than $1 wholesale and contains ketchup with the same recipe as some grocery-store brands the Fremont Co. makes.

Mr. Zachary said he has seen W Ketchup priced as high as $10 a bottle. Locally, the Fulton County Republican Party, which ordered 64 bottles of W Ketchup at the Republican convention in New York, is selling it for $5 a bottle.

"Throw away your Heinz. Insist on W Ketchup," says a sign in front of the ketchup bottles, displayed amid an array of Bush-Cheney pins at the party headquarters in Wauseon.

Whether W Ketchup can stay in the black, however, will depend largely on whether the friends can balance supply with a demand that might dry up after the Nov. 2 election.

"Maybe the biggest determinant will be if the music stops, how many bottles of ketchup will we have left?" Mr. Zachary said.

Warehouses in Connecticut and California are stocked with W Ketchup. But it has created "a huge amount of buzz" in the media, which has helped allay the founding friends' fears that "we would end up owning 30,000 bottles of ketchup," Mr. Zachary said.

Contact Jane Schmucker at:

jschmucker@theblade.com

or 419-337-7780.