WhereIsAtlas · Food
What Happened to Sriracha?
The rooster bottle went from a Chinatown storefront to every restaurant table in America — then Huy Fong lost the pepper farm that made it possible, and a jury awarded that farm $23.3 million.
Huy Fong Foods built one of the world's most recognizable food brands with no advertising and a single recipe — then broke with the one California farm that grew its peppers. A $23.3 million jury verdict and the shortage that followed revealed how much of the rooster's power rested on a single supply chain.
The bottle on every table
Walk into almost any Asian restaurant in America and you will be handed a clear plastic squeeze bottle with a green cap and a rooster on the label. That is Huy Fong's Sriracha — for decades the quiet default hot sauce of a whole food culture, and one of the most successful consumer brands ever built without a single advertisement.
By 2021 it was the most popular hot sauce brand in the United States. A few years later it was being rationed, and bottles were changing hands online for as much as $70 each. Both facts come from the same source: a Vietnamese refugee, one recipe, and one farm in California.
Where the sauce actually comes from
Sriracha did not begin with the rooster. Its ancestry runs back through Cantonese garlic-chilli sauces — sold commercially in China from 1891 by a company called Koon Yick Wah Kee — to the Chinese communities who migrated to Thailand, where a Thai version called Sriraja Panich was created by Thanom Chakkapak in the coastal town of Si Racha.[3]
That sauce became popular across Southeast Asia, particularly in Vietnamese and Thai communities. It was the sriracha David Tran knew — and the one he set out to remake for America.
A refugee's sauce
Huy Fong Foods was founded in 1980 in Los Angeles by Tran, who had fled Vietnam the previous year. He started small, making chili sauces in a Chinatown storefront for the Vietnamese restaurants and grocers around him.
The company's name is a piece of that journey: Huy Fong takes its name from the Taiwanese freighter on which Tran escaped Vietnam. He has said he began making sauce because American hot sauces were not spicy enough compared with the ones he knew — and he deliberately printed his label in several languages so that customers of different backgrounds could understand what they were buying.
His version was not a copy. Tran made it sweeter and redder, and packaged it in a clear squeeze bottle with a rooster, designed so diners would recognise it instantly on a restaurant table.
The brand that never advertised
What made Huy Fong unusual was restraint. David Tran refused to advertise. He kept one recipe and did not chase trends. He bought his peppers from a single grower rather than spreading risk.
That worked spectacularly. The sauce spread restaurant by restaurant and kitchen by kitchen, carried by chefs and word of mouth rather than marketing, until the rooster was shorthand for sriracha itself.
The city that sued over the smell
Success brought an unusual problem. Huy Fong's Irwindale factory processes enormous volumes of chili, and in 2014 the city of Irwindale sued the company, arguing that fumes drifting from the plant were a public nuisance to nearby residents.[4] It became a small national story — the town that tried to shut down Sriracha — and the city council later moved to drop the complaints.
It was a warning about scale. It was not what broke the company.
The breakup with Underwood Ranches
For 28 years, Huy Fong bought its red jalapeños from Underwood Ranches, a family farming operation in Ventura County, California. The arrangement was the backbone of the product: the sauce's specific flavour and colour depended on those peppers, grown to order. By 2015 Underwood was supplying more than 100 million pounds of peppers a year.
Then it fell apart. Reporting on the dispute describes Huy Fong setting up a separate sourcing company, Chilico, and pressing Underwood to grow more peppers at lower prices in order to compete with cheaper alternatives. Underwood could not do it — and had already acquired land dedicated solely to Huy Fong's needs.
Huy Fong sued Underwood seeking a refund of payments already made. Underwood counter-sued for breach of contract and fraud. The jury sided with the farmer.
The $23.3 million verdict
In 2019 Underwood Ranches was awarded $23.3 million, a verdict Huy Fong fought to have overturned.[5][6] The case laid bare the risk in Huy Fong's model: a company that had deliberately concentrated everything — one recipe, one bottle, one pepper — had concentrated its fate into one supplier as well.
The Great Sriracha Shortage
The consequences arrived over the following years. With its pepper pipeline gone, Huy Fong turned to multiple farms, many of them in Mexico. Increased distance from its Irwindale plant, and drought in Central America, made that supply unstable.
In 2022 the company warned customers of a shortage. Through 2023 the "Great Sriracha Shortage" became a genuine consumer phenomenon: bottles vanished from shelves, restaurants rationed what they had, and resale prices spiked as high as $70. For the first time in four decades, the rooster was beatable — and rival sauce makers, some of whom had spent years imitating Huy Fong, rushed in to take shelf space that had been untouchable.
Where Sriracha is now
Huy Fong still exists, still family-owned, and the rooster is still on the label. By 2024 the shortage was easing: new farms had planted jalapeños to fill the gap, and reporting noted an unidentified buyer quietly purchasing large volumes of peppers — widely believed to be Huy Fong rebuilding its supply.[7][7]
But the company is no longer unassailable. Competitors that once could only imitate now have real market share, their own pepper contracts, and customers who learned the rooster sauce was not infinite. Elsewhere in the world, the sauces that inspired it — including Chin-Su and Cholimex in Vietnam — never went away.
Frequently asked questions
These are the questions people actually search for about Sriracha, answered directly.
Does Huy Fong Sriracha still exist?
Yes. Huy Fong Foods still operates in Irwindale, California, remains family-owned, and still produces its rooster-branded sriracha. Supply recovered by 2024 after several years of shortage.
Why was there a Sriracha shortage?
Huy Fong ended its 28-year relationship with its sole pepper supplier, Underwood Ranches, after a dispute over pricing and a separate sourcing company called Chilico. With the relationship gone it could not source enough of the specific red jalapeños its recipe required — compounded later by distance and drought at new farms. A jury awarded Underwood $23.3 million in 2019, and the supply disruption peaked in 2022-2023.
Who owns Huy Fong Foods?
It remains privately held and family-owned, founded and built by David Tran, a Vietnamese refugee who started the company in Los Angeles in 1980.
Is Huy Fong Sriracha still made in California?
Yes — production is based at the company's Irwindale, California facility, the same plant the city sued over fumes in 2014 before dropping the action.
Why is Sriracha called Sriracha?
The sauce takes its name from Si Racha, a coastal town in Thailand whose local chilli condiment — Sriraja Panich, created by Thanom Chakkapak — inspired it. The American version was reworked by David Tran into the sweeter, redder sauce sold under the rooster label.
Did Huy Fong sue its pepper farmer?
Yes. Huy Fong sued Underwood Ranches seeking a refund of payments, and Underwood counter-sued for breach of contract and fraud. The jury sided with Underwood, awarding the farm $23.3 million in 2019.
Entries in this story
Sources
- Who is David Tran, the 'saucy billionaire' behind this cult chilli sauce? — SBS (2026-09-10)
- Sriracha hot sauce purveyor turns up the heat — Los Angeles Times (2026-09-10)
- Huy Fong Foods and the case of the mysterious vanishing Sriracha sauce — Asianati (2026-09-10) ↩
- Irwindale ends lawsuit against Sriracha maker Huy Fong — BBC News (2026-09-10) ↩
- Ventura County jalapeño grower awarded $23.3 million in Sriracha lawsuit — The State Journal-Register (2026-09-10) ↩
- Jury says Sriracha manufacturer owes former pepper farmer millions — Daily Breeze (2026-09-10) ↩
- Sriracha sorrows fade as new farms harvest jalapeños — Ag Alert (California Farm Bureau) (2026-09-10) ↩
- Is lack of peppers really causing Sriracha shortage? — NBC Los Angeles (2026-09-10)