Huy Fong Foods facts for kids
 |
|
| Private | |
| Industry | Hot sauce |
| Founded | February 5, 1980 in Los Angeles |
| Founder | David Tran |
| Headquarters |
,
United States
|
|
Key people
|
William Tran, President Yassie Tran Holliday, Vice President |
| Products | Asian-style hot sauce |
| Owner | Tran family |
|
Number of employees
|
≈200 (2023) |
| Huy Fong Foods | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chinese name | |||||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 滙豐食品公司 | ||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 汇丰食品公司 | ||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||
| Vietnamese name | |||||||||||||
| Vietnamese alphabet | Công ty Thực phẩm Hối Phong | ||||||||||||
| Chữ Hán | 公司食品滙豐 | ||||||||||||
Huy Fong Foods is an American company that makes popular hot sauce. It is located in Irwindale, California. David Tran, who came from Vietnam, started the company in 1980. He began in Los Angeles's Chinatown. Huy Fong Foods has become a top company in the Asian hot sauce market. Its most famous product is Sriracha sauce. Many people call it "rooster sauce" because of the rooster picture on the bottle.
Contents
What Sauces Does Huy Fong Make?
The company's most famous product is its Sriracha sauce. This sauce is bright red and comes in a clear plastic bottle. It has a green cap and the famous rooster logo. The main ingredients are peppers, garlic, and sugar. The bottle also has text in five different languages. Unlike some other hot sauces, Huy Fong's Sriracha does not have fish extract. This means it is good for people who are vegans.
Huy Fong Foods also makes other sauces. These include sambal oelek and chili garlic sauces.
The Story of Huy Fong Foods
How the Company Started
David Tran, who was born in 1945, founded Huy Fong Foods. He was a businessman from China who had lived in Vietnam. After the Vietnam War, Tran left Vietnam on a cargo boat. He arrived in the United States in 1979. He soon moved to Los Angeles because he heard red peppers grew there.
In Los Angeles, Tran started his own hot sauce company. He named it after the Huey Fong ship that brought him to America. The rooster symbol on the Sriracha bottles is special. It is there because Tran was born in the Year of the Rooster on the Vietnamese zodiac. He officially started Huy Fong Foods, Inc. in February 1980. He had made hot sauce with his family before, when he was a cook in the army. He started by selling his hot sauces from a van to local Asian restaurants. In his first month, he earned $2,300.
David Tran sees Huy Fong Foods as a family business. His son, William Tran, is now the company president. His daughter, Yassie Tran-Holliday, is the vice president.
How the Sauces Are Made
In 1987, Huy Fong Foods moved to a larger building in Rosemead, California. In 2010, the company opened a very big factory in Irwindale, California. This factory is where all three of the brand's sauces are made. David Tran himself changed some of the machines used to make the sauces. He taught himself how to work with machines and weld. Since 2014, the Irwindale factory has been open for visitors. It has even become a place tourists like to visit!
Sometimes, the smell of chilies from the factory bothered people living nearby. In 2013, the city of Irwindale filed a lawsuit. They said the smell was a problem. A judge ordered the factory to partly shut down for a short time. But the city later dropped the lawsuit in 2014. This happened after a meeting between the city and the company.
Huy Fong Foods buys chilies grown in California. Most of the chili paste is made in just two months during the autumn harvest. The company used to use serrano chilies. But they found them hard to harvest. The sauces are made from natural chili paste. They do not contain any artificial ingredients.
The company has never advertised its products. It relies on people telling others about the sauces. This is called word of mouth. The company sells a lot of sauce. In 2010, they made 20 million bottles in one year. By 2012, their sales were over $60 million a year. In 2019, they had a 10% share of the hot sauce market in the United States. The company made over $150 million in revenue in 2022.
Huy Fong Foods has also warned customers about fake versions of its sauces.
Getting Enough Peppers
For 28 years, Huy Fong Foods worked with Underwood Ranches. This farm grew most of the jalapeño peppers for Huy Fong Foods. As Huy Fong Foods became more successful, Underwood Ranches grew more and more peppers. By 2006, they grew 95% of the peppers Huy Fong Foods used.
However, their partnership ended in 2016. There was a disagreement between David Tran and the farm owner. Huy Fong Foods later sued Underwood Ranches. Underwood Ranches also sued Huy Fong Foods. A jury decided that Huy Fong Foods had to pay Underwood Ranches $23.3 million.
In June 2022, Huy Fong Foods stopped making chili sauce for a short time. This was because there were not enough chili peppers. A drought in Mexico affected the quality of the peppers. Production started again in the fall. But in April 2023, the company announced another "unprecedented inventory shortage." They could not say when the shortage would end. Some reports say this shortage happened because Huy Fong changed pepper suppliers. In May 2024, the company again said it would stop production until at least September 2024 due to pepper supply issues.
Awards and Special Recognition
In December 2009, Bon Appétit magazine called Huy Fong's Sriracha sauce the "Ingredient of the Year" for 2010. Huy Fong also won two awards in 2017. These included the FABI culinary award in Chicago.
