After thousands of customer complaints, Wild's EZY-Sauce, popular among home cooks and sauce makers, will return to supermarket shelves.
Earlier this year, the company Kraft Heinz discontinued the sauce because of operational challenges with its supply partners.
EZY-Sauce is a pickling liquid or sauce enhancer used as a base to make homemade relishes, pickles, and sauces.
Ritches IGA chief executive Fred Harrison said the supermarket received an email from Kraft Heinz announcing the return of sauce.
"Our stores received emails [from Kraft Heinz] advising that, due to more than 2,000 customer complaints, by popular demand Wild's EZY-Sauce will be coming back," Mr Harrison said.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Kraft Heinz confirmed the return of the sauce but could not give an exact date for when the product would return to supermarket shelves.
The spokesperson said production had been disrupted by the pandemic and other manufacturing issues, but the company was grateful for the "many varied and passionate expressions of love" for the sauce.
"We have been overwhelmed to hear about the popularity of our iconic Wild's EZY-Sauce and the role it has played in the lives of very loyal consumers across the country," they said.
Mr Harrison said the product was only available for two or three months each year during sauce-making and preserving season when tomatoes were ripe.
"It's such an essential ingredient, it almost stops the process if we don't have it," he said.
He said many customers were stressed when they could not find the product ahead of sauce-making season earlier in the year and thought the supermarket was responsible.
A recipe for family tradition
Judith Bysouth, from the Natimuk Agricultural Society, runs a tomato-sauce-making competition every year.
She said Horsham received around 5 tonnes of tomatoes from a single supplier each year.
"That alone would require about 500 bottles of EZY-Sauce," Ms Bysouth said.
Ms Bysouth said being able to make homemade sauces using EZY-Sauce was a way to stay connected to family history despite having busy lives.
"We just don't have Grandma to teach us how to do some of the old things we used to do," she said.
"It helps us keep that tradition of making our homemade sauce going when we're time poor.
"[Kraft Heinz] have got about five months up their sleeve before it'll be in high demand because sauce-making season is late January, February, and early March."
Ruth, a home cook and preserver from Bendigo, said hearing that the sauce was back made her day.
She said EZY-Sauce was "a game changer" because she believed it had higher concentrations of acetic acid, which preserved sauces better for longer.
"I'm messaging all the family this morning 'It's back, it's back, it's back!'"
"[It] just shows what people power can do."
