Mystery of the ketchup cups

Great investigation!

However, the inventor of tea bags never intended them to be used for brewing tea either[1]:

>First appearing commercially around 1904, tea bags were successfully marketed about 1908 by the tea and coffee importer Thomas Sullivan from New York, who shipped his silk tea bags around the world. The loose tea was intended to be removed from the bags by customers, but they found it easier to brew the tea with the tea still enclosed in the porous bags.

That is, the "correct" usage of tea bags came from the customers misusing the product a century ago.

Who can say that unfolding a ketchup cup doesn't follow the same pattern?

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_bag#History

I adore deep digs on obscure subject like this. One wonders if the idea goes back even further, before registration. Perhaps some 1880's cafe was cranking them out with a diy divice. Seems like it would be a device you produce for practicality first, and 'you ought patent that' later when its utility was manifest.

Worse yet, Culvers uses plastic ketchup cups. Not only can't you dip your burger in them, you can't get the ketchup out and onto your burger. It just sits in there, a gelatinous blob clinging to the sides of the cup. Useless.

I mentioned this to our local Culvers owner the day the place opened. No change in years. Sigh.

At least with the paper ones, you can crush them and squeeze the ketchup out like toothpaste onto your bun or whatever.

When I was a kid, before these paper cups were widely used at restaurants for ketchup, my parents used to use empty cream containers. I used to like drinking the cream to empty out the containers. :/

P.S. The real trick is to take a large soda lid and pump the ketchup onto it. (You may want to use two nested lids to prevent leakage through the straw hole)

It turns out we've been doing journalism all wrong!