When the Duchess of Sussex’s lifestyle brand As Ever launched last week, the £14 raspberry spread in “keepsake packaging” – AKA a jam jar – sold out within half an hour. If the price seems a little eye-watering for something you could easily make at home, there is one thing Meghan got right: our appetite for condiments – from preserves to chilli oils and hot sauces – is bottomless. With the continuing rise of little treat culture, condiments that hover around the £10 mark have become the new “lipstick effect”.
Delli, an online retailer for independent brands, has doubled its condiment sales in the past year, with bestsellers including a £10 “croissant butter” and a £6.99 Malaysian Chinese chilli oil. Waitrose reported an 18% rise in condiment sales in the last month, with the Ottolenghi range of green harissa paste (£5) and miso pesto (£4) both up 13%. Marks & Spencer is echoing this uptick in premium condiments, with sales of truffle mayo (£3.25 as opposed to £1.50 for their classic mayo) up 10% on last year. Now a range of “swicy” (sweet and spicy) condiments including gochujang mayo, hot honey sauce and peach and jalapeno relish are in development.
“They’re something you can invest in to add great flavour and elevate the simplest of meals,” says Laura Jackson, a self-confessed condiment obsessive and the co-founder of Glassette. “We’re cost-cutting in other places but spending more on things like condiments. Jo Malone didn’t invent the scented candle, but she very much made it a status symbol, and it’s becoming that way with condiments.”
Claire Dinhut, the author of The Condiment Book, compares the condiment boom to buying clothes. Instead of cost per wear, she likes to think about cost per eat. “You’re not opening a £10 jar and finishing it in one night, you’re divvying it up,” she says.
Social media, and specifically #CondimentTok, is fuelling the trend, with users detailing recent sauce, chutney and pickle hauls and clever ways to put near-empty jars featuring eye-catching illustrations and punchy logos to use. Brooklyn Beckham’s Cloud23 hot sauce, which comes in a glass bottle featuring kissing cherubim, has been compared to luxury perfume packaging.
“People are really thinking about how things look,” says Jackson. “Condiments are what you want to leave out on your kitchen table, on your shelves, and by your cooker for people to see.”
Jake Normal, an executive sous-chef at Ottolenghi, says part of the appeal is they add big flavour to simple home cooking. “People want to try new things, but they don’t always have the time to invest in sourcing ingredients and making it,” he says. “Condiments can turn the same few ingredients into five different meals with minimal effort.”
Dinhut, however, cautions against attaching labels such as “trending”. “We’re talking about condiments from different cultures that perhaps just haven’t been exposed to other countries before,” she says, with chilli oil a prime example. “It’s a big thing now, but it’s a staple in east Asia.”
Restaurants are getting in on the condiment boom, selling house-made sauces and dressings – such as Sambal Shiok’s tomato sambal (£10.50), Gymkhana’s peanut and sesame chutney (£7), and Koya’s bitsy chilli oil (£6.50). “It’s not possible for everyone to go out to restaurants and spend lots of money on food, so it’s nice to be able to have that restaurant flavour at home,” says Jackson.
But heritage condiment brands are taking note. Jackson points to the 156-year-old food manufacturer Heinz, which has teamed up with the millennial paint brand Lick on a limited edition tomato ketchup shade. Elsewhere, Chopova Lowena, a London-based fashion brand loved by Dua Lipa and Madonna has joined forces with Hellmann’s on a £1,770 handbag complete with pouch designed to fit a jar of mayo. Thankfully, that particular condiment still falls at around the £3.50 mark.
