Every bottle of Heinz Ketchup carries a small “57” printed near the neck, and it has nothing to do with how many ingredients are inside or how the sauce is made. It’s a number founder Henry Heinz picked essentially out of thin air.
In 1896, Heinz was riding a New York elevated train and spotted an advertisement for a shoe store boasting “21 styles.” He liked the psychological punch of an oddly specific number and decided his own company needed one, even though by then Heinz already sold over 60 different products.
He settled on 57 simply because he liked how the digits looked together — 5 was his lucky number, and 7 was his wife’s. The actual product count at the time was irrelevant to the choice.
More than a century later, “57 Varieties” is still stamped on the label, permanently frozen at a number that was never accurate and was never meant to be.