CHICAGO, May 5 (UPI) -- Dave Schy always loved ketchup -- the texture, the way it would cling to French fries.
But as the 45-year-old chef grew older, "I needed something more."
"One day in the kitchen, I was working on a special," he recalled as he prepared for this week's Food Marketing Institute at McCormick Place. "I always had been a ketchup-lover but I felt it needed more flavor. Ketchup just wasn't doing it for me anymore.
"So I chopped up nacho (pepper) slices and I couldn't believe how good it was!"
Schy has parlayed that experiment into a line of four specialty ketchups -- Ketchupeno, Ketchupotle, Ketchonfire and Buff-A-Que.
"The most exotic has to be Ketchonfire -- habeneros, Jamaican allspice, pineapple and tamarin. It tastes tropical and hot," said Schy, who mixes up his concoctions at Tone Products in suburban Melrose Park.
"It took me three tries to get the Ketchonfire right (last week)," he said. "A lot of things I do don't come out. It takes a lot of different concocting to get the sort of balance that I'm looking for. It was a 400-gallon tub. Spices and peppers change seasonally. It's got to be done by taste."
Schy, who orchestrated the cuisine at Hat Dance, the first upscale Mexican-style restaurant in Chicago, and owned the Hubbard Street Cafe, said sales of his ketchups are going really well.
"There's no (other) real alternative to Heinz," Schy noted. "If you look at coffee, you can have coffee at home or if you want premium, you go to Starbucks. You can have ice cream at home or if you want premium, you go to Baskin Robbins. But in ketchup, Heinz is the premium. It's been easy for me to be the alternative."
Why ketchup? Why not just salsa?
"Salsa doesn't cling," Schy said. "As a kid, I put it (ketchup) on everything -- hamburgers, chicken. As I grew up, I needed more."
Schy, whose company is Schy-Town of Northbrook, Ill., also has developed sauces for other companies, including barbecue sauces and salad dressings. He said he even developed a steak sauce for the Denny's restaurant chain and is a consultant for the Burrito Beach chain.
Schy developed his taste for Mexican food in Los Angeles. He said he also traveled and cooked in Mexico.
"If you look at what's happening in the food world, Hispanic influence is turning up everywhere -- but it's not what you get in Mexico," he said. "In the United States, we have inspired Mexican flavors for gooey nachos and big burritos. That's where my ketchups fit in. They're not Mexican ketchups; they're ketchups with Mexican inspired peppers."
His opinion was bolstered by the number of salsas and hot sauces on display among the 1,000 exhibits. Extreme Food, which put its wares on display across the hall at the Fancy Food Show, offered its Death Sauce and its After Death Sauce among other products.
"It's been growing since 1994," a spokesman said. "We'd find people would come in and order Buffalo wings and then order a second order so they could take it home for lunch."
Other offerings with a Hispanic flare included Mexican spiced cocoa, and multi-colored tortillas with flavors like strawberry for use in deserts.
Other trends:
Name recognition is a growing attraction in the industry. National restaurant chains Hooters and T.G.I. Friday's were hawking a line of freezer-case foods based on their menus.
In the "why haven't they done it all these years category," Mr. Coffee, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, unveiled its own brand of coffee.
"We did focus groups and 99 percent of consumers said they had heard of Mr. Coffee," spokesman Ron Jackson said. "Twenty-nine percent said they thought we already had a coffee brand."
To break into crowded grocery store self space, Mr. Coffee will be offering incentive programs to grocery stores and including samples of its brew in coffee filter boxes and with new coffee makers. National distribution is expected to be in full swing by fall.
With grocery stores attempting to offer more services to lure consumers, Coinstar is stepping up with a multi-function machine that will count coins, print digital pictures, issue pre-paid credit cards and allow consumers to add minutes to their pre-paid cell phones. Rollout is slated for the end of the year.
Among the more exotic products on display was barley tea offered by House Foods America Corp. The caffeine-free drink is common in Asian food specialty stores. The push now is to make it available in mainstream grocery aisles.
