Restaurants serve condiments three ways, split by segment: QSR and fast-food use single-serve sachets (one per order), fine dining and hotels use individual ceramic dip bowls (~50 ml per guest), and casual sit-down places use a shared generic squeeze bottle on the table. The format follows the price point and the hygiene bar, not the food. Here's who uses what, and why.
First, kill the myth
The story that restaurants refill branded ketchup bottles with cheap sauce is mostly wrong. Two reasons. One: places that want a cheaper sauce just buy it and serve it directly — nobody's decanting from a 5 L can through a squeeze-bottle neck to save a few rupees; the labour costs more than the sauce saved. Two: the bottles on casual tables aren't branded to begin with — they're plain generic squeeze bottles, so there's no brand to fake. A guest can't tell what's inside a red squeeze bottle anyway. So don't pick your format around a scandal that isn't happening. Pick it around service speed and hygiene.
Condiment format by segment
| Segment | Format | Why | What we supply |
|---|---|---|---|
| QSR / fast-food (McDonald's-type) | Single-serve sachet, one per serving | Faster counter service, portion-controlled, one-touch-per-guest | 8 g sauce sachet, salt/pepper/sugar sachets |
| Fine dining | Individual ceramic dip bowl (~50 ml) | Plated presentation, per-guest portion | Sachets for takeaway/backup; bowls are the restaurant's own crockery |
| Hotels (coffee shop, room service) | Individual dip bowl + sachet on the tray | Per-guest hygiene, no shared handling | Sachet range for in-room + delivery trays |
| Casual sit-down | Shared generic squeeze bottle | Cheapest, refill from bulk | Bulk ketchup for the bottle; sachets if they want to upgrade |
The hygiene line most people miss
A shared squeeze bottle is touched by every table that used it before yours — same nozzle, same body, no wipe-down between guests through a busy service. A single-serve sachet is one-touch-per-guest: the guest tears their own, nobody else handled it. That's the real reason QSR chains standardised on sachets, and it's the reason a dip bowl (each guest gets their own) beats a shared bottle at a hotel table. If you're deciding between a shared bottle and per-serve, the hygiene case for per-serve is the strong one — not the taste, not the branding.
The sachet economics, in real numbers
Per-serve doesn't have to be expensive. Our single-serve range, plain stock:
| Sachet | Fill | Rate | GST |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ketchup (Smith & Jones, a Tata line we distribute) | 8 g | ₹0.75/sachet | incl. GST |
| Salt | 1 g | ₹0.20/sachet | GST-exempt |
| Black pepper | 1 g | ₹0.40/sachet | +5% GST |
| Sugar | 5 g | ₹0.40 generic / ₹0.50 branded | +5% GST |
So a QSR order with one ketchup, one salt, one pepper sachet is roughly ₹1.35 of condiment. That's the whole "per-serving" cost — no bottle to clean, no sauce binned because a table barely touched a shared bottle. For a burger or a fries portion, the 8 g sachet is one serving; jump to a full thali and you add a second sachet rather than a bigger pack, so you're never paying for sauce that gets thrown out.
What a mid-tier restaurant actually needs
Don't buy every format. If you run a QSR or a delivery-first kitchen, standardise on sachets — one ketchup and a salt/pepper per order, drop the toothpick and second spoon into the cutlery kit, done. If you run a sit-down casual place, a generic squeeze bottle per table is genuinely fine and cheapest; add sachets only for takeaway and delivery, where a bottle can't go. A fine-dining room already has the crockery for dip bowls — sachets there are for the packed/room-service side, not the table. The mistake is a casual place buying single-serve sachets for dine-in when a shared bottle costs a fraction, or a QSR trying to run dip bowls it has to wash. Match the format to your service model, not to the tier above you.
A real scenario from the belt
A cloud kitchen we supply near Ramnagar ran shared squeeze bottles for dine-in and loose sauce cups for delivery — the cups leaked in transit and got complaints. We moved their delivery side to sealed 8 g single-serve sachets: one per burger, two on a full meal. Leakage complaints stopped (a sealed sachet can't pop like a loose cup lid), and their per-order condiment cost landed near ₹0.75–1.50 depending on the dish — costed cleanly against the order instead of guessing bulk usage. Dine-in kept the shared bottle. Right format per channel, not one format everywhere.
What to do next
- See the single-serve sachet range — ketchup, salt, pepper, sugar — plus cutlery kits on the cutlery & sachets page.
- Tell us your segment (QSR / fine dining / casual / cloud kitchen) and daily covers, and we'll spec the format and the per-serve cost — including the case where a shared bottle is still the right, cheaper call.