Why is Sriracha so Popular?

In 1980, Vietnamese immigrant David Tran started Huy Fong, a company named after the boat that brought him to America.

Tran used a hand-painted Rooster logo for the company symbolizing his birth year 1945.

Huy Fong didn’t introduce Sriracha sauce until 1983.

The History of Sriracha

Sriracha sauce earned its name from the coastal Thailand town Si Racha, famous for its red chilli sauce.

With no advertising budget or salesforce, Tran started selling the sauce to Asian restaurants and markets in LA.

The sauce itself is a modified version of a famous Thai recipe known as Sriraja Panich, which is sweeter and thinner than Tran’s version.

Sriracha sauce is made of vinegar, sugar, garlic, and Thai peppers, all products Tran gracefully inherited from California.

Manufacturing Sriracha Sauce

Tran started with a 5,000 square foot building in Chinatown, Los Angeles.

In 1987, he moved into a 68,000 square foot facility in Rosemead California.

He eventually purchased an old 170,000 square foot factory two doors down, for a total of 238,000 square feet.

But that wasn’t enough.

Tran bought a 650,000 square foot factory in Irwindale, which can produce 18000 bottles of Sriracha an hour.

How Sriracha Became Popular

Some say Sriracha got its rise from branding deals, but its popularity began surging with the emergence of “Foodie Culture,” social media, and immigration.

Back when Tran started Huy Fong, social media didn’t exist, and cooking shows were limited.

Fast-forward 20 years and both are hot commodities.

And so is Sriracha sauce.

In fact, between 2000–2013 the hot sauce market grew more than 150%.

That’s more than ketchup, mayo, mustard and bbq sauce combined due to American millennial and multicultural markets.

Why not Tabasco?

Why didn’t it spark in popularity?

There is something about the unique backstory, branding, name, logo, lack of marketing budget, and simple word of mouth style that caused foodies and immigrants alike to gravitate towards Sriracha sauce over competitors.

Sriracha also received praise from chefs, including David Chang, founder of Momofuku, who places Sriracha bottles in all his restaurants.

Spicy Sriracha Competitors

With such mass popularity, other hot sauce manufacturers such as Frank’s and Tabasco created their own versions of Sriracha.

There’s even sriracha ketchup.

Sriracha merchandise took off, beginning on Etsy and ending in Wal-Mart.

Sriracha was a catalyst, a gateway hot-sauce if you will.

One that introduces foodies into the world of spice, then causes them to crave more.

For now it lies in the middle ground; second to Tabasco, and not welcome on every table like ketchup and mustard.

However, you can find it in the refrigerators of 16% of households headed by someone over the age of 35.