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Sweet and spicy with a sour tinge, sriracha sauce was an instant hit when David Tran, a Vietnamese refugee, brought it to America in the 1980s under the brand Huy Fong Foods. Asian eateries were the first to snap up Mr Tran’s hot sauce, but before long the green-nozzled bottle, with its distinctive rooster logo, had become a staple in restaurants and pantries alike. Within just a few years Mr Tran went from hawking his wares out of a Chevy van in Los Angeles to walking the floor of a 20,000-square-metre factory. By 2020 his business was worth $1bn.
Since then, however, it has suffered a meltdown. First came grumblings by fans that the condiment had lost its vibrant crimson colour and peppery punch. Next came the shortages. Enthusiasts soon panicked and began to hoard the stuff. At one point last year resale prices for Huy Fong’s sauce on eBay, an e-commerce site, reached as high as $150 per bottle. To cap it off, last month the company announced it was halting production until at least September.
For decades Huy Fong set its sriracha apart with fresh jalapeños reddened on the vine, a difficult commodity to grow at scale. Competitors turned to dried chillies. Mr Tran turned to Craig Underwood, a Californian with a penchant for peppers. For 28 years Underwood Ranches, his company, met all Huy Fong’s jalapeño needs, at one point producing close to 45,000 tonnes a year. To fill Huy Fong’s bottles, Underwood Ranches expanded its acreage ten-fold. The two men became chums. In 2017, however, the relationship soured following a disagreement between Mr Tran and Mr Underwood over financial terms.
Although Mr Tran scrambled to find new growers, turning south to Mexico, none has been able to reliably meet his exacting requirements. “It wasn’t easy to put together that supply chain,” Mr Underwood explains. Huy Fong’s woes began in earnest once its reserves began to run out in 2020.
Competitors have been all too willing to step into the gap left by the sriracha pioneer. McIlhenny, which makes Tabasco, a rival hot sauce, began peddling its own sriracha product with a campaign promising “no shortage of flavour inspiration”. In the second half of last year its condiment was the bestselling sriracha sauce in America. Other brands have had a boost, too. Even Underwood Ranches has piled in with its own product, trading on its reputation as Huy Fong’s erstwhile supplier. If there is one lesson from Mr Tran’s debacle, then, it is to keep your friends close—and your jalapeños closer.■
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