Ketchup Games Picking Up the Pieces After 1st Chopstick Mailing Went Awry

There are bad breaks in business, but fledgling Ketchup Games of West Los Angeles said it recently experienced some very bad breaks. Literally.

Ketchup’s inaugural product--a set of training chopsticks for the novice called Quikstix--was chopped, shredded and crunched by the post office’s mail sorting equipment several weeks ago, according to Ketchup President Stephen Santore.

“It has put a kink in our plans,” Santore said. Ketchup lost more than 500 packages of Quikstix, which are wooden chopsticks that can be joined together at the top with a crosspiece and rubber band, making them easier to maneuver, he said.

Ketchup was out about $700, not counting the time spent by Santore and his partner, Maile Meyer, Santore said.

The problem arose after a postal worker told Santore that the Quikstix, packaged in a plastic bag, could be mailed with regular 22-cent postage and did not require any special handling, Santore said. Santore said he realized something was wrong when shredded Quikstix mailers began returning to the company marked “unable to process.”

“Because of this unforeseen snafu, our potential distributors were mailed Quikstix products that looked more like toothpicks than chopsticks,” Santore said.

Postal workers apologized about the mishap and he was told to file a claim for estimated damages, “which the government may or may not decide to pay,” Santore said.

A local spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service said he could not comment on the incident because he was not familiar with the details. “We don’t know if they got them back and broke them themselves,” he said.

If a claim by a citizen against the postal service is denied or if the citizen thinks the amount awarded is too low, he or she can appeal the decision to a federal court, the spokesman said.

Meanwhile, Santore is designing a new package--a box, this time--in which to mail the products. They should be shipped out sometime next month.

“I think we’ll be able to deal with this just fine,” he said.