Free ketchup!

As most kids I have been a big fast food fan for as long as I can remember. In my early years my favorite fast food joint had been Kochlöffel which got replaced by McDonald's when I started consciously travelling to larger cities. My German home town did not get a McDonald's restaurant before I turned 18.

At the age of 17 I went to America for the first time, only to discover that back in its homeland, McDonald's did not charge for bags of ketchup! Actually, no fast food chain seemed to charge for that red sauce. In Germany, you usually get charged per bag of ketchup ordered. Can I have two bags? "Sure, that's 40 cent, please."

I felt betrayed, disillusioned, and ripped off. All these years I have been paying for ketchup! And now this? Too make a long story short, I stopped paying for ketchup. In fact I decided to simply stop asking for ketchup. "You want ketchup with that order?" No, stay away! The fast food chains could continue ripping off every naive German customer that stepped up to their counter, I would no longer play along. Up to this day, more than 10 years later, I have not paid for ketchup since.

So today I stopped at Burger King at Reeperbahn on my way home. And you know what? They started giving away ketchups for free! I mean, wow, how did that happen?

Well, since I have no way of knowing (ok, I guess I could just call up Burger King headquarters and maybe get an answer, but I won't go as far) let me just assume that Burger King's intrusive "You want cheese and bacon with that Whopper?" upsell strategy is such a cash machine that it starting paying for the bags of ketchup. Then again, maybe this new strategy is not so profitable at all.

But, hey, I got a free bag of ketchup at a German Burger King! I am sold.