Heinz's new contactless sauce dispenser proves an old adage true again – Scotsman comment

Necessity is the mother of invention. And this is true whether the task in hand is trying to save the crew of Apollo 13 as they hurtle with seeming inevitability towards disaster or you just want some sauce on your chips.

Heinz's new sauce dispenser is contactless.

While Nasa rose to the challenge of saving Jim Lovell and crew in 1970, as immortalised in the 1995 film starring Tom Hanks, it was Heinz that passed the latter test of our ingenuity with its landmark invention – a contactless sauce dispenser.

Apparently, all you need to do is place your food under the nozzle where a sensor will detect its presence and deliver a helping, presumably with better portion control than glass bottles, which, as we all know, have a tendency to be most reluctant to deliver sauce to the plate and then release a sudden deluge.

The ability to obtain sauce without touching anything is important in this Age of Covid, following the sensible decision by many cafes and takeaways to remove bottles to help prevent the spread of the virus. At least, it is to those of us who miss our sauces.

And, sometimes, it is the little things in a crisis that can really push us over the edge, sap our morale and just generally make us feel more depressed about the state of the world.

So, on behalf of a nation that prides itself on its track record of inventions – we don’t like to brag but there is a tea towel with a rather long list – Heinz, we salute you!

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