who doesn&39t have a few of these lying around our kitchen drawers istockmost people don&rsquot give much thought to the little plastic soy sauce packets tossed in chinese carryout.but the history behind the condiment&39s packaging has a surprising twist thanks to a shrewd new york city businessman who helped popularize soy sauce and made the country&39s third most popular condiment, reports from the atlantic.the first design for soy sauce packets appeared in 1955 when harold m. ross and yale kaplan filed a u.s. patent for a singleserving &ldquodispensing container for liquids&rdquo meant to contain &ldquosauce or syrup&rdquo that could be extracted by squeezing. this original container had a feature that would allow users to stop the flow of liquid by releasing pressure on the packet&mdashobviously something a bit more advanced than the somewhat flimsy, unstoppable soy sauce packets of today.but it was howard epstein, a businessman from the bronx who founded food packaging company kariout in 1964, who&39s largely credited with popularizing the plastic packet we know today. epstein took the flimsy plastic packaging his company was making for freezer pops and decided to try it out with soy sauce. but when he approached chinese food restaurant owners, they were skeptical.related image&ldquono one trusted me because it was the old times. the chinese ran the business,&rdquo epstein told the atlantic.but his luck changed when airlines began purchasing epstein&rsquos packaged soy sauce to accompany inflight meals. the timing was perfect. it was a time when air travel was becoming more affordable, and the proliferation of transatlantic and transpacific travel meant more visitors were coming to the u.s.&mdashincluding those from china.&ldquopeople were leaving china and coming into the united states to open a restaurant and cook. the industry was booming,&rdquo epstein recalls.epstein continued to grow his business and today estimates kariout controls a 50percentshare of the soy sauce packet market.today soy sauce packets have evolved beyond the rectangular packet. there&rsquos the dip & squeeze plastic tub&mdashmost often used for ketchup but can double as a standalone dunking station or squeezed from the top. texan gary murphy recently invented the little soya fish container. with a green screw cap and molded plastic base, the fishshaped container allows users to save sauce for later. he also fills his packets with a glutenfree soy sauce that&rsquos on trend with health conscious eaters today.the new design is so innovative that once nasa got wind of it, they started using it for astronauts&39 food.something to chew on when you try and figure out what to do with all those tiny plastic packets that pile up in your refrigerator.cousin. 
