On the day that the foundation of Craig Underwood’s business collapsed, he was on vacation—at the beach with his wife, daughters, and grandchildren in Hawaii.

It was November 2016, and the fourth-generation California farmer had just completed a perfect pepper harvest—another high point for a business, Underwood Ranches, that had grown exponentially over three decades on the strength of a single crop. As the sole supplier of the juicy red jalapeños for sriracha, Huy Fong Foods’ iconic fiery-red chili-garlic sauce, Underwood’s empire of peppers had spread from a 400-acre family farm in the 1980s to 3,000 acres across two counties outside Los Angeles.

Sriracha’s rise had by then become the stuff of business legend. That spicy, slightly sweet, good-on-everything sauce, in the instantly recognizable bottle with its white rooster emblem and bright green nozzle, was the brainchild of David Tran, who had first devised the recipe and sold the stuff in L.A. in 1980 as a Vietnamese refugee starting a new life for his family.

Tran’s business motto is “make product, and not profit,” but Huy Fong had become the No. 3 hot sauce brand in America—all as a private company, without selling even the smallest share to the country’s Big Food titans. At the time, Tran’s green-tipped bottles could be found in one in 10 American kitchens and on the International Space Station.

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  • nicetriangle@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

    If you’re in the states, also give Secret Aardvark a try. It’s not a Sriracha copy or anything but for me it really scratches that itch of a hot sauce that you really wanna squirt a lot of on anything. It’s fucking delicious.

    • littleblue✨@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Secret Aardvark got their start in Portland via guerrilla marketing: literally leaving full bottles on restaurant tables with the salt, sugar, jam, etc. after their meal. I noticed it happening at a small diner, but didn’t out them at the time — just asked the server if she’d seen the hot sauce before. “Nope. That’s not yours? Hunh. Is it any good?” From that point on, it kept popping up in more and more places until it was a local point of pride. Genius. 🤌🏼

      • negativeyoda@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Fellow Portlander here with tons of Secret Aardvark sauce in my fridge. I’ve never heard that. That’s brilliant.

      • nicetriangle@kbin.social
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        10 months ago

        Yeah they may have done that in Seattle too because I first noticed them randomly popping up on tables in small diner sorta spots around town when I was living there.

        It definitely worked, I went home the first time I tried it and ordered multiple bottles and recommend it all the time. I live in the EU now and it’s harder to come by here but I did just find a site that sells it today so I am for sure ordering some.