A Kraft barbecue sauce, dated by its owner to 1985.

Bull’s-Eye is a bottled barbecue sauce sold today by Kraft Heinz. Its owner dates it to 1985. The brand’s British website, run by Kraft Heinz, says Bull’s-Eye has been “taking barbecues to the next level since 1985,” under the heading “Born and Raised in the USA,” and a Kraft Heinz launch campaign reported by the advertising trade site LBBOnline on 15 May 2018 described the brand as “brought to life in the USA in 1985.” English Wikipedia also gives 1985 as the year of introduction, lists Bull’s-Eye among Kraft Foods brands, and says it is made and distributed by Kraft Heinz in the United States and Canada.

The brand’s path to its present owner runs through the Kraft businesses. English Wikipedia says that when the original Kraft Foods company was divided in 2012, Bull’s-Eye stayed with Kraft Foods Group. Kraft Foods Group then merged with Heinz: the trade publication FoodIngredientsFirst reported on 3 July 2015 that the merger had been completed, creating The Kraft Heinz Company, with Bernardo Hees as chief executive, and that Kraft Foods Group shares would cease trading on the NASDAQ at the close on 2 July. Kraft Heinz has owned Bull’s-Eye since 2015.

In October 2026 the brand’s United States website, bullseyebbq.com, carries a 2026 Kraft Heinz copyright line. It lists Original, Hickory Smoke, Everyday Honey and Everyday Original among its top products, and describes the sauces as “made by meat lovers, for meat lovers, who own the grill.” Its recipe pages lean on regional barbecue styles, with dishes billed as Memphis-style ribs and a Carolina-style pork sandwich.

A burger, a statue and the word “bold.”

Bull’s-Eye has long been sold through restaurants as well as supermarkets. A press release issued by Burger King through Market Wire in 2000 announced a new BK Cravers value menu, to begin on 2 October that year, which included a new Bull’s-Eye BBQ Deluxe burger; the release carried the sauce’s name in capitals with a registered-trademark sign. English Wikipedia, citing a 1999 report in the Press-Telegram of Long Beach, California, says the sauce was also used on Burger King’s Rodeo Cheeseburger.

Television advertising came back in 2010. Adweek reported on 16 June 2010, in an article by Elaine Wong, that Kraft Foods’ Bull’s-Eye brand had returned to national television “after nearly two decades.” The 15-second spot, called “Statue,” was made by the agency Draftfcb Chicago. It had been scheduled to appear first on the brand’s website, the magazine said, but Kraft bought a last-minute slot during Game 6 of the NBA Finals instead.

The spot was built on a single word. Adweek said it showed a reel of statue portraits while a voiceover set “bold” against “sweet,” observing that people build statues of bold men, not of sweet men — except, it added, as figurines, as a figurine of a small boy appeared on screen. The magazine described the play on the word “bold” as part of a larger campaign Kraft had begun for the sauce. Boldness has stayed in the brand’s language since: the 2018 European launch described Bull’s-Eye as “the big, bold tasting BBQ sauce,” and English Wikipedia gives an early tag line, “The Big, Bold Taste of Bulls-Eye can’t be beat.”

English Wikipedia also records a Canadian campaign of 2009, the “Bull’s-Eye Brotherhood,” a comic series of web videos with the Canadian comedian Gerry Dee, citing a report in Marketing magazine of 1 June 2009.

Design and documentation.

The brands in this group are barbecue and steak sauces, condiments sold in bottles on supermarket shelves and set out on restaurant tables. They are bought quickly and used often, so a bottle in this category usually has to be recognised at arm’s length, among many similar bottles in the same aisle, by its shape, its colour and the name on the label.

That is why identity in this part of the grocery trade tends to rest on a few repeated signals rather than on the sauce itself. A wordmark, a founder’s name or face, a place name, a slogan or a short run of letters can travel from bottle to advertisement to recipe card, while the bottle changes size, material and cap many times over the years and new flavours are added beside the original.

The companies behind these names have often changed hands, been folded into larger food groups or moved where their sauces are made, so each guide asks plain questions: who started the brand, who owns it now, where the sauce is made and how its labels have been presented. Each separates what independent sources record from what a company says about itself.

A London agency, a fence and the line “Cook Strong.”

The brand’s documented emblem is an animal. When Kraft Heinz took Bull’s-Eye to Europe in 2018, LBBOnline reported on 15 May that year, the digital launch campaign by the London agency The&Partnership ran across the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands. The report said it took the sauce into UK and Dutch supermarkets and relaunched it in Germany. The campaign, the report said, featured “the brand’s icon: an American long horn bull,” pawing the ground in a pen before breaking through the fence. The film was directed by Ian Schwarz for the production company PRETTYBIRD UK, according to the credits LBBOnline published. The launch ran as 10- and 20-second films on video-on-demand services, timed, the report said, for the approaching summer.

That campaign also gave the brand a line, “Cook Strong.” LBBOnline said it was meant to encourage amateur cooks to “take up their tongs and cook with sheer conviction,” and quoted Alessandra de Dreuille, then a senior brand manager at Kraft Heinz, saying the agency could “capture the true spirit of the brand.” The executive creative director, Yan Elliott, was quoted saying the message was “black and white.” The British website still ends its brand story with a string of short commands — “Cook low & slow,” “Cook with friends old & new,” “Cook strong.” — and describes the sauces as “full-bodied, smoky, and packed with flavour.” It promises a sauce for every cut, “from brisket to wings, or ribs to ribeye.”

For a design guide, Bull’s-Eye shows how a grocery sauce without a founder’s story can build its identity from an animal emblem and one repeated idea. Compare Kraft Mac & Cheese, another Kraft brand, and Sweet Baby Ray’s, another American barbecue sauce. For this guide we use black, an ember red and a longhorn tan with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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