Founder Henry J. Heinz began packing foodstuffs on a small scale in 1869, at a location in Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania. He founded Heinz Noble & Company with a friend, L. Clarence Noble, and began marketing horseradish. The company went bankrupt in 1875, but the following year Heinz founded another company, F & J Heinz, with his brother John Heinz and a cousin Frederick Heinz. One of this company's first products was tomato ketchup.

The company continued to grow, and in 1888 Heinz bought out his other two partners and reorganized the company as the H. J. Heinz Company. The company moved to Pittsburgh and constructed their historic North Side factory in 1890. The staple products are their trademark pickles, baked beans and the world-famous ketchup.

Of all the Pittsburgh products that have made their way across the globe, Heinz ketchup may be the most recognizable of them all. You could be stranded on a mountaintop in Norway, in a raging blizzard, miles from civilization, and take refuge in a Red Cross cabin. Open the cabinet and what will you find? ... Heinz ketchup from Pittsburgh! That's a true story.

For years Heinz Ketchup has captivated the population with anticipation, or could it be called frustration, who wait patiently for the slow running sauce to escape from the bottle. The company's 1970s jingle "Anticipation" was voted the best advertisement of the 20th century. It was so good that the company could basically scrap their advertising budget because the world was already brimming with anticipation for the best ketchup on the planet.

Today, Heinz has subsidiary locations scattered about the United States, and factories in Australia, Canada, India, the Netherlands, Philippines and the United Kingdom. It truly is a world-wide operation, and it is based here in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.