Sriracha founder reveals the 'secret' wholesale price of his sauce

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/numbers/exclusive-sriracha-founder-reveals-secret-wholesale-price-his-sauce

by jmacd • 13 years ago

149 140 13 years ago

NicoJuicy2• 13 years ago

Serious? I have like 2 of those bottles in my closet on 5 feet away from me. Someone always brings it along from Brussels... (live in Belgium), so this is quite awesome. Really didn't expect this :-D

Great hot spicey sauce!

fein4• 13 years ago

I've always wondered this: What is availability like for this stuff in foreign countries? I can go to the store now (NE US) and find the original plus another 4-5 knockoffs. Even cheap places like Save-A-Lot has bottles sometimes for $3 or so.

seszett• 13 years ago

There is some in my local supermarket, in France, as well as a few other brands. I don't think it's difficult to find anywhere.

Edit - looks like in Europe we usually have a Thai brand, while in the US it's mostly the interviewed guy's brand. I never paid attention, I don't like it anyway.

Aqwis• 13 years ago

In Norway, it and its knockoffs are widely available in ethnic stores, but the price is closer to $8 than $3 for a big bottle.

ilamont• 13 years ago

In recent visits to Asia, I haven't seen it in restaurants/food stalls in Vietnam, Malaysia, or Taiwan. Haven't looked for it supermarkets.

julianz• 13 years ago

We have quite a few different brands available in New Zealand. I'm not sure about the US one but there's some that are really good, some not so much. It's cheap.

froo• 13 years ago

I've been unable to track it down in major supermarkets/grocers here in Australia, but the occasional Asian supermarket sells it (and sometimes knockoffs)

You can easily tell which are the knockoffs - http://www.foodrepublic.com/2013/01/17/how-spot-fake-srirach...

gajomi• 13 years ago

In Austria (well, at least in Vienna) it is realatively easy to find Sriracha, but I haven't found a store that carries Huy Fung yet. The main brand in most stores is called Flying Goose, or something to that affect. It is noticeably sweeter (I think there is more sugar) and less spicy than Huy Fung. It is a bit tangier as well. I do hope to find the Huy Fung brand eventually, if I can!

mattparlane2• 13 years ago

I'm from NZ, I've never heard about this stuff till now. I just bought myself a couple of bottles here[0], $4.88NZD each, which is currently $4.05USD.

[0] http://www.mightymart.co.nz/product/Suree-Sriracha-Chilli-Sa...

NicoJuicy2• 13 years ago

Well, the place in Brussels is the only place i know where they sell this.

And even then, it's a friend of mine who brings it along (they know i like spicey stuff :) ).

But none the less, Belgium isn't an easy market for anyone. Dutch, french and even German language. In Brussels, there would probably be a lot of English speaking persons to ;-). So i wouldn't generalise my experience to anyone (every webapp requires localization here :-) )

garybizzle• 13 years ago

If only he had followed it up with the recipe..

fein4• 13 years ago

It's primarily just chilis. From the bottle:

Chili, sugar, salt, garlic, distilled vinegar, potassium sorbate, sodium bisulfite and xanthan gum.

Remove the last 3 ingredients then just shoot for texture. for any given bottle, probably 75% chili, 10% vinegar, salt, sugar, garlic for the last 15%.

If you can match the consistency, you can probably match the flavor. You just need a line on fresh California Red Jalepenos.

I'd probably throw out the salt and just go for MSG.

kyleblarson• 13 years ago

Your macbook air is just plastic, metal, and some silicone. Just throw a couple of those together too while you're at it.

DanBC• 13 years ago

probably 75% chili, 10% vinegar, salt, sugar, garlic for the last 15%.

But there is more sugar, and more salt, and more garlic, than vinegar.

ry0ohki• 13 years ago

Based on how different the generic alternatives taste, it must be more difficult than this.

drivers99• 13 years ago

xanthan gum is likely for texture, so why remove it then go for the texture after that? You can buy xanthan gum. I know it's also used in gluten free baking.

robflynn• 13 years ago

I have not tried this recipe yet as I have not been able to get my hands on a large quantity (for me) of good chilis, but I've had this bookmarked to play around with:

http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Sriracha-aka-Rooster-Sau...

vtbassmatt• 13 years ago

http://www.seriouseats.com/2012/02/how-to-make-sriracha-from... is a good resource.

murtza3• 13 years ago

Previous to the past couple of months, I had never seen any interviews with the founder of Sriracha. The Google Trends data also shows a big increase for searches on his company, Huy Fong Foods.

http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=Huy+Fong+Foods#q=Huy%...

Aside from increasing awareness about his product, why do you think he started doing interviews?

jasonlotito• 13 years ago

why do you think he started doing interviews?
On Nov. 22, a judge is set to hear a request from the southern California city of Irwindale to close the hot sauce’s factory because of complaints over smell from neighbors.

murtza3• 13 years ago

Thanks. I skipped over the first section when I read the article.

bmelton2• 13 years ago

Apparently his factory is being threatened with shutdowns because it makes all the surrounding properties smell like Sriracha.

Edit - apparently the judge denied the shutdown, possibly in part to the huge amount of outpouring by the community.

http://www.refinery29.com/2013/10/56374/sriracha-lawsuit-fac...

murtza3• 13 years ago

Thanks for the link. It makes sense now.

jonknee• 13 years ago

Besides increasing awareness about his product, why do you think he started doing interviews?

Because he's in court facing a factory shutdown?

potatolicious• 13 years ago

This may be a legitimate grassroots social media phenomenon - the sort that big multinationals try to create but fail at.

Sriracha has obviously been a mainstay at Asian restaurants for years. But like bacon, it didn't become A Thing until Digg/Reddit/the greater internet subculture rolled around.

Folks like the Oatmeal started writing digital love letters to the sauce[1], which helped boost its mythical status amongst the Reddit crowd.

I'm guessing he started doing interviews when people actually started wanting to interview him. Prior to the internet's obsession with sriracha it was just an easily-overloooked condiment associated with Asian food.

[1] http://theoatmeal.com/comics/sriracha

dasil003• 13 years ago

I remember sriracha being a thing back in 99/00 we were eating boatloads of the stuff on ramen noodles. Of course I had friends who were waiters and bartenders, so that might have had something to do with it.

JoblessWonder• 13 years ago

Before Digg/Reddit/The Internet every college kid in California was obsessed with it. I still an old roommate who travels around the world with her own little bottle in case she can't find it locally.

I remember an article from around 2009 where he talks about the drunken voicemails he received. It was in the NY Times so it isn't like they have been hiding.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/dining/20united.html?_r=3&

notatoad• 13 years ago

I'm pretty sure bacon has been a thing for longer than the internet.

ChikkaChiChi• 13 years ago

Sriracha has become the new 'bacon' lately. Oatmeal has been proclaiming it for quite some time, with (I believe) another cartoon being written earlier this summer.

Combine that with the 'Big Government versus little sauce' angle and you have a situation Slacktivists froth at the mouth for.

BryantD• 13 years ago

He's been doing marketing for ages. Search back on HN a bit; every six months or so someone links to a new profile piece on him and his business. He's just really good at PR.

rayiner• 13 years ago

Californian NIMBY-ness strikes again.

a request from the southern California city of Irwindale to close the hot sauce’s factory because of complaints over smell from neighbors.

guyzero• 13 years ago

In fairness to the NIMBYs, the factory has grown immensely in the last few years and the "smell" is aerosolized peppers, basically pepper spray.

To quote the LA Times: "...the hot sauce’s production facilities are, residents are complaining of burning eyes, irritated throats and headaches caused by a powerful, painful odor that the city says appears to be emanating from the factory during production."

swang2• 13 years ago

It actually moved to Irwindale from Rosemead.

tedunangst• 13 years ago

In fairness to the factory, every resident everywhere to ever live near anything they didn't like, from power lines to roller skating rinks, has developed burning eyes, irritated throats and headaches. It could be true, but half the time people don't even realize they have symptoms until a "spokesperson for the community" reaches out and informs them of the terrible conditions they're living in.

Wingman4l72• 13 years ago

All of a sudden this joke makes sense:

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/sriracha_odor

dubfan4• 13 years ago

It's even more amazing when you look at a satellite map of the city. It consists mostly of warehouses, industry and a rock quarry. You'd think they would want companies like Huy Fong Foods. https://maps.google.com/?q=Irwindale,+CA

asperous• 13 years ago

I'm not sure which map you're looking at. Irwindale is located in LA county, one of the most populated areas of the US. Obviously if the smell didn't go very far it wouldn't be much of a problem.

andymcsherry• 13 years ago

Looks like there's residential pretty close by: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Huy+Fong+Foods&hl=en&ll=34.09...

bluthru• 13 years ago

It's the responsibility of Sriracha to not reduce the quality of life of others. How is it any different than pollution? If Sriracha is pumping irritants into the air and it affects neighbors, the should be doing a better job of filtering their exhaust. It's not fair that their property value drops because a neighbor isn't being responsible.

the_hangman2• 13 years ago

Notice that you said "if". There haven't been any actual studies conducted to prove or disprove that the Sriracha factory is polluting the air surrounding the factory -- only anecdotal evidence about asthma symptoms flaring up and burning eyes. There are official channels in place for factories to be shut down for pollution. They can't be used in this case because the AQMB has yet to find any air quality violations at the factory.

If Sriracha is really causing these symptoms, wouldn't they be most prevalent in people who work at the actual factory in question? Why is there no anecdotal evidence of their loss of quality of life?

vacri• 13 years ago

Is it just 'smell', or is it aerosolised capsaicin? The latter is not really fair to characterise as NIMBY-ness.

the_hangman2• 13 years ago

It's just smell. And media hype. But mostly just smell.

gopalv• 13 years ago

So it's popularity has a lot to do with the 2$ a bottle price?

Sure, it tastes good but can we track down a fair bit of the popularity/availability on shelves to the cost factor?

Raphmedia• 13 years ago

It's cheap, so a lot of students tried it. They loved it, told their friends, told their parents.

nsxwolf• 13 years ago

The smell they're complaining about... does it smell like the product? Because if it smells like the product, I'd love to live next door!

castis• 13 years ago

What a lot of people are complaining about isn't necessarily the smell of it. The fumes from the plant are essentially pepper spray. People are complaining about difficulty breathing and its getting in their eyes.

greyfade• 13 years ago

You'd love to live in a Mace pepper spray cloud?

krapp• 13 years ago

With sriracha it's always worth the pain.

ars• 13 years ago

Because if it smells like the product, I'd love to live next door!

It would smell like that for a few hours, and then you wouldn't smell it anymore.

After that even if you ate it you wouldn't get the proper taste, so I'd think you'd stay as far away as possible.

ChuckMcM• 13 years ago

Given his relative success (the article states its a multi-million dollar business) running the outgassing from the plant through a water bath should be pretty straightforward. Basically blowing the air through pipes which bubble it underwater. The water runoff would then have the pepper oils in it.

Next up Sirachi Spicey Hot Bottled Water!

dubfan4• 13 years ago

Wouldn't you need to add some sort of detergent to get the non-polar oils to dissolve in water? Disposing of that mixture could be tricky.

jlgreco8• 13 years ago

Wouldn't just regular old soap do it? Soapy water mixed with pepper shouldn't be too nasty, but then again, California....

fleitz• 13 years ago

You don't need the oils to dissolve in water, only to condense out of the air into the water.

judk• 13 years ago

This is how to make "liquid smoke flavor" aka "bacon flavor", sriracha's only rival.

Mikeb852• 13 years ago

I've read lots of interesting stories about the founding of this company, and of course I love the product. It's nice to see an entrepreneur that values the quality of their product first, before business considerations.

As for the dispute with the city, it's the city that enticed him to move his operations there, then he invested his money, and now they're trying to shut him down. Very shady business on the part of the city of Irwindale, something that demands a judge's attention...

dubfan4• 13 years ago

Here's an LA Times story that corroborates your comment, and adds some additional insight: http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-1110-sriracha-20131110,0,...

Inspectors from the South Coast Air Quality Management District have visited the plant several times without issuing a citation. Tran said in court documents that the complaints about the smell originated with an Irwindale city councilman's son.

zackmorris• 13 years ago

God bless Sriracha. I'm willing to take the dent in my average post score, that's how much I love the dang stuff. Long live Sriracha.

P.S. You haven't smelled a bad factory smell until you've driven past the sugarbeet processing plants in Nampa, Idaho, or the miles upon miles of factory farm dairies in eastern Idaho. Maybe Sriracha could use something like that for their Chewbacca defense.

jlgreco8• 13 years ago

Dairy farms are nothing compared to pig farms. Absolutely foul. The smell is so penetrating it feels like you can smell it through your eyeballs. Cow manure you can get use to, but I could never get use to pig shit.

Papermills are also infamously smelly, though you can get use to those pretty quickly.

MichaelGG• 13 years ago

It smells pretty bad, but by the end of a day I just don't notice it anymore. Unless standing right near the manure pit.

blankenship• 13 years ago

My dad’s extended family was involved in the papermill business in the hills of North Carolina. The running joke was, “Smells like money.”

code_duck4• 13 years ago

You can get 'used' to a smell of a papermill, I guess except that typically the fumes and particulates are toxic. There's a difference between merely experiencing an odor and ingesting unhealthy chemicals through respiration, though often people seem to not realize that the former often means the latter.

greedo2• 13 years ago

Slaughter yards are the worst. Drive north on I-29 from Omaha to Sioux City and you can smell the city from 30 miles out. Its nickname is Sewer City, and it actually made it hard for Gateway Computers to attract talent.

inafield• 13 years ago

I'm not sure what is worse, pigs or chickens.

bitops• 13 years ago

I still remember being a kid visiting a pig farm in elementary school. Why they subjected us to this, I do not know.

Well, at one point, we were "allowed" to stand next to the manure pit, which was a cylindrical tank with no top. I poked my head over...

Did you know that some stenches can be so intense that they actually have wet vapor and can sting your eyes? I didn't know until that day. But after that day, I never forgot.

prawn• 13 years ago

Reminds me of this horrific and epic Rolling Stone article about pig farms. It's long, but worth reading:

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/boss-hog-the-dark-s...

vanadium• 13 years ago

Having worked at a rendering plant for a couple of weeks during my (late) teenage years as an industrial temp worker, well, I can tell you what comes out of those places beats just about anything imaginable. Manure pits? Slaughterhouses? Way too fresh, my friends, to get anywhere near the full experience we endured. Think slow-cooked rot--and we were the ones on cleanup duty picking up bones and other ephemera left behind.

Here's a good taste of what one could expect, and it really was amazingly terrible prior to the stench becoming peripheral from exposure: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendering_%28animals%29

A friend and I spent an entire summer working jobs nobody in our (typically) white, middle-class peer group would dare even consider to touch in order to understand for ourselves just how important and respectful these roles were in our daily lives. And boy, let me tell you, it was an amazing and formative experience; I wouldn't trade those experiences for the world. It was "Dirty Jobs" 10 years before the show came out, and in more than a couple of cases, likely illegal given our age versus risk at the time.

amiramir• 13 years ago

A friend of mine who is an industrial photographer got an assignment to photograph an anchovy processing plant. He said that you could smell the plant from over ten miles away. Part of his contract was to have all of his clothes and equipment replaced since there was no way to get the smell out.

tracker1• 13 years ago

I think the worst smell I've ever been near would be a dry dog food plant...

curiousphil• 13 years ago

ha ha, I can confirm. I live and work in Nampa and the beet factory puts off a stink like you wouldn't believe. What's awesome is how the smell transforms from day to day. Some days it smells like strong peanut butter, some days it smells kind of musty and some days it smells extremely putrid. Luckily I moved across town a few years ago and the smell rarely makes it to my subdivision.

cwbrandsma• 13 years ago

Can confirm, I grew up on a dairy near Twin Falls Idaho, and now live in Boise (near Nampa). Occasionally I can smell that sugar beet plant from my house and it is as bad or worse than any dairy.

Wingman4l72• 13 years ago

Surprised no one has yet mentioned the uniquely awful smell of driving past a chicken farm on a hot day.

witek• 13 years ago

Nothing beats a fish sauce factory. Fermenting fish, mhmm...

jlgreco8• 13 years ago

I wonder what it is like to live near a Surströmming factory...

elwell• 13 years ago

In Singapore it is illegal to bring Durian indoors; its odor is so pungent.

yen2232• 13 years ago

Durians are some of the tastiest fruit out there. Could never understand why people can't stand the smell. Although I did grow up with them.

yen2232• 13 years ago

Y'all never had to study next to a latex-processing factory. Smelled like a million old sneakers. Consider yourselves lucky.

danso• 13 years ago

Wow, I would've never imagined the Sriacha founder to be such a nice, conscientious guy. A Nobel Peace Prize for him:

Q: What do you think about copy-cat Srirachas? A: “It’s good…[take] a red flower, it looks good but [it’s] not colorful. You need to have green and yellow ... So [in] the market, [if there was] only my hot sauce, [people] cannot compare. More competitors [are] better for consumer [choice].”
Q: Inflation has more than tripled food prices since you started making the hot sauce, but you have never changed your wholesale price. Why? A: “The price has increased…but we can cover the increased [food] price. We just want to sell more product….[also] if we export to some expensive country, I don’t have two prices. Not domestic price and another country, another price – only one price.”

Q: What do you think Sriracha’s fandom? A: “I enjoy it. I enjoy it because more and more people enjoy my product. I need to say thank you [to] everyone. Help me big or a little bit – I thank you.”

robomartin• 13 years ago

Hot peppers can be deadly to people who are not used to spicy food. I bought a few raw habañeros a few weeks ago. I have cooked with jalapeño and serrano's but never habañero. Wow! Just a thin slice was hot beyond description. My wife is hyper-sensitive to spicy food. I was so certain these things were dangerous to her that I threw them away after using a couple to cook with. Here it is in numbers [0].

I can see the potential for fumes from the manufacture of hot sauces being irritating a lot of people. Sriracha isn't particularly hot. If you really want to try hot buy a bottle of Dave's Insanity. BE VERY CAREFUL IF YOU DO. They ask that you use it one drop at a time. Believe me, that is good advice.

Those not into hot sauces don't believe that these sauces actually have taste. And sauces such as Dave's and Sriracha taste really good. There are many sauces that just burn. I don't know many hot sauce afficionado's who enjoy sauces devoid of taste.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoville_scale

bmelton2• 13 years ago

I was once surprised by a burger in Vegas that had a sauce made from Ghost Peppers[1], also known as Bhut Jolokia, which is about twice as potent as habanero, but feels far more painful.

On the scoville scale, the ghost pepper sits very near the top, with a rating of ~1 million scoville units, which sits comfortably above the average consumer-grade pepper spray. Eating it ... tastes like pepper spray.

That said, since then, I've decided to build up a tolerance to it. I've always enjoyed spicy foods, and the spicier the better, but the ghost pepper has proven to be a tough nut to crack, as I've yet to get past using it in fairly small amounts in flake form.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_chili

darkspaten• 13 years ago

Good luck building up tolerance; I found it to be a lot easier than I thought it might be. I was given a few Ghost Pepper seeds in the Spring and prior to the last Fall harvest I worked up to a tolerance of about two tablespoons of chopped peppers. However, like any tolerance, once you do this 'lesser' peppers such as habanero cease to have much impact.

ismarc• 13 years ago

Peppers are particularly difficult to cook with. Their oils are what is spicy, so you get variations based on growing conditions as well as how you prepare it. To reduce spiciness, remove all seeds, rinse with cold water and put it in a cold salt water bath for a couple of hours. Not enough to change the flavor, but just until you start to see the oils collect on the surface. This only works with raw peppers. If you then lightly sear the outside, you can get more of the flavor without the spiciness getting into the rest of the food as much. With the right sized pieces, you can then pull out the spicy chunks and still have the nice flavor.

darkarmani• 13 years ago

To reduce spiciness, remove all seeds, rinse with cold water and put it in a cold salt water bath for a couple of hours.

This is popular opinion, but I've also heard from cooks that the seeds don't contain much spiciness in them, but the pulp around them does. Could it be that the outsides of the seeds are covered in oil and the insides are actually neutral?

mattmaroon• 13 years ago

I would have asked why they need to put preservatives in a chili sauce. Most have none and yet can sit on a table for years.

aeflash• 13 years ago

A lot of hot sauces have vinegar as a core ingredient, which acts as a preservative.

NDizzle• 13 years ago

You know how the Soylent guy wants to have tap water and tap soylent in homes of the future?

In my humble opinion, I think we need tap sriracha in homes of today! Down with soylent!

JshWright• 13 years ago

Alternatively you could combine the two. Some sriracha might make make soylent a bit more palatable...

(This comment is intended as humor... I have never tried soylent)

dnautics• 13 years ago

so, nobody asked, because they assumed it was a trade secret? Hilarious.

lnanek2• 13 years ago

Hmm, impressively humble and forthright. As the Germans would say, I have nothing to complain about.

staunch• 13 years ago

I buy it for like $2.50 retail, so that's kind of awesome.

MrMeker• 13 years ago

This would be a great place to bootstrap a startup. Cheap rent, this sauce is great on ramen, and the smell would make it so only the most dedicated co-founders who really love their product can stand to work on it. Almost zero distractions because no one would come to visit. It would also help with the 'elevator pitch' although you would have to get your timing down to sub-floor latency because everyone is certain to leave at the next stop.

imethan• 13 years ago

I think being transported to the International Spaaaaaace Station [1] is one of the highest honors a commercial object of any kind can receive. I remember reading about it in this article [2].

Love the stuff, it's on the table in front of me now.

[1] http://i.imgur.com/n1Y7B.jpg [2] http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-02-21/sriracha-hot...

brosco45• 13 years ago

No need for sales nor marketing!

notdrunkatall2• 13 years ago

I remember when I had this in Vietnam for the first time four years ago - I was blown away. I wondered why it hadn't been sold in the USA, why I'd never heard of it, and lo and behold, the very next year, it started showing up in various places.

omaranto• 13 years ago

Is "four years ago" a typo? Huy Fong Foods, maker of the most popular brand of Sriracha in the US has been in business since the eighties.

notdrunkatall2• 13 years ago

No, you just suck at reading comprehension.

mmuro• 13 years ago

What I find most interesting about this company is that he's never advertised. He started selling it locally to cooks and it spread by word of mouth.

grinich• 13 years ago

Or taste in mouth, I suppose.

Sriracha founder reveals the 'secret' wholesale price of his sauce

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