Why Do Kikkoman Soy Sauce Bottles Have Two Spouts?

Has it ever happened to you: You’re dining inside a restaurant and you want to make your dipping sauce or sawsawan, your hand reaches for the bottle of soy sauce, but as you pour the soy sauce into the saucer, the soy sauce misses the saucer and spills on the table? You’re not alone in this mess.

If you’re using Kikkoman, a Japanese soy sauce brand, you should know that there’s a way to avoid this soy sauce-spilling situation once and for all. The answer is the packaging Kikkoman uses.

Kikkoman sells soy sauce in those glass bottles that have a distinct design: the bottles have a transparent glass bottle with a wide base, a tapered bottleneck connected to the red cap. According to an article on Real Simple, the red cap of a Kikkoman bottle has two spouts on opposite sides which are meant to control how much soy sauce comes out of the bottle.

How? You hold your finger on one of the spouts and angle the other (unblocked) spout to where you want to add the soy sauce. You’ll notice that even as you try to pour the soy sauce, it isn’t coming out of the bottle. What you have to do is to slowly lift your finger that’s blocking the spout and the soy sauce will then flow out of the other spout. 

Cool, right? Thanks to science and Kikkoman’s ingenious packaging, you can now control just how much soy sauce you can add to your dish.