Since starting the eValue-ator, I have gotten several comments from friends and family recalling the letter I wrote to Kikkoman in 2007, decrying their soy sauce dispensing system. I always wondered if the day this clearly articulated gripe arrived in their inbox and started getting circulated throughout the office, if meetings were held and desks were cleaned out as an HR representative stood nearby.
My ending is rather harsh, because I had not yet developed this blog and the concept of "allowing" the company to "write the last chapter" of the story, preferably by acknowledging the problem, promising to at least look into solving it, and providing some sort of compensation for the trouble endured and the letter written. In this case, Kikkoman sent me a standard apology letter and one of their classic glass decanters with the double pinhead-sized pour spouts on its plastic cap. This dispenser (at right, in the photo) works much better than their bottle at the table, but it comes up short in the refrigerator, where it could easily tip over and start dribbling out--or at the very least exposing the soy sauce to air through the two permanently open holes, thus making it lose freshness.
Dear Kikkoman.com:
Our family have always been fans of Kikkoman soy sauce, but your 15-oz. bottle has put a dark cloud over our experience with your product.
The LAST bottle of Kikkoman we bought (probably a couple years ago), which was about a 10-12 oz. bottle, had an efficient, small-diameter cap insert that dispensed the sauce with a quick shake, exactly where you wanted it.
The new 15-oz. bottle has four large slots around the edge of the insert under the cap, and the sauce comes POURING out if you attempt to shake it onto food on a plate. If you carefully tip the bottle to coax just a few drops out while moving it around the food on your plate, it simply dribbles down the side of the bottle and onto the table.
Folks, this is not ketchup! Soy sauce is a concentrated, runny condiment that is delightful in small amounts but disgusting in large, splashy pools that overpower the subtle flavors of our homemade stir-fry. It's positively Kooky, man!
What were you THINKING in making such a change?!? My GUESS is that you were thinking, "Hey, let's put bigger holes in the cap insert so that people can POUR it into measuring spoons for COOKING, and they'll WASTE even more attempting to dispense it at the TABLE, too, thus leading to higher sales."
Which middle manager of your organization came up with this foolish scheme? Which vice president signed off on it? Their short-term thinking for quick-term profits has led not only me, but undoubtedly many consumers, to think twice before buying another bottle of Kikkoman. Sentence the offenders to a week of waiting tables at a restaurant where Kikkoman in the 15-oz. bottle is served, and make them hear the curses of its users and clean up the stainy, sticky mess that results from ordinary table use.
Now I will BOYCOTT Kikkoman soy sauce and pass a copy of this letter on to EVERYONE on my personal e-mail list, warning them to avoid your needlessly gushy delivery system until we see a new badge on the Kikkoman label that says, "Now with NEW variable-flow dispenser cap!"
This boycott ended a year ago when my wife picked up another bottle of Kikkoman, apparently having forgotten my big position on this Crucial Issue of Our Era. And I regret to report that the stuff still comes gushing out of the bottle, and we'll have to switch back to our regional grocery store chain brand.
