Huy Fong Foods facts for kids
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| Private | |
| Industry | Hot sauce |
| Founded | February 5, 1980 in Los Angeles |
| Founder | David Tran |
| Headquarters |
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United States
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Key people
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William Tran, President Yassie Tran Holliday, Vice President |
| Products | Asian-style hot sauce |
| Owner | Tran family |
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Number of employees
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≈200 (2023) |
| Huy Fong Foods | |||||||||||||
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| Chinese name | |||||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 匯豐食品公司 | ||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 汇丰食品公司 | ||||||||||||
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| Vietnamese name | |||||||||||||
| Vietnamese alphabet | Công ty Thực phẩm Hối Phong | ||||||||||||
| Chữ Hán | 公司食品匯豐 | ||||||||||||
Huy Fong Foods is an American company that makes hot sauce. It is located in Irwindale, California. The company was started by David Tran, who came from Vietnam, in 1980. He began his business on Spring Street in Los Angeles's Chinatown. Huy Fong Foods has become a top company in the Asian hot sauce market. Their most famous product is sriracha sauce. People often call it "rooster sauce" because of the rooster picture on its label.
Contents
What Huy Fong Foods Makes
The company's most popular product is its sriracha sauce. The main things in it are peppers, garlic, and sugar. It was first made with Serrano peppers. Now, it uses red Jalapeño peppers, which makes it a bit less spicy.
Huy Fong Foods' sriracha sauce is their best-known and best-selling item. You can easily spot it by its bright red color and its clear plastic bottle with a green cap. The bottle has words in five languages: Vietnamese, English, Chinese, French, and Spanish. It also has the famous rooster logo. People often call it "rooster sauce" because of this logo. Unlike some other hot sauces, Huy Fong's sriracha sauce does not have fish extract. This means it is good for most vegetarians.
Huy Fong Foods also makes other sauces. These include sambal oelek and chili garlic sauces.
How Huy Fong Foods Started
The Beginning of the Company
Huy Fong Foods was started by David Tran, who was born in 1945. He is a businessman of Chinese background. He was also a soldier in the South Vietnamese army. After the Vietnam War, Tran left Vietnam on a cargo boat. He arrived in Boston in the spring of 1979. He was one of many Vietnamese boat people who moved to new countries.
Soon after getting to Boston, Tran called his brother-in-law in Los Angeles. He decided to move to Los Angeles because he learned that red peppers grew there.
After moving to Los Angeles, Tran started his own hot sauce company. He named it after the Huey Fong freighter, which was the ship that brought him to the United States. The rooster symbol on the Sriracha bottles is special. It's 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. This was less than a month after he arrived in Los Angeles. He had made hot sauce with his family before, when he worked as a cook in the South Vietnamese army. He began selling his hot sauces to local Asian restaurants from a van. In his first month, he made $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.
Making the Sauce
In 1987, Huy Fong Foods moved to a larger building in Rosemead, California. This building was about 68,000 square feet. It used to be where the toy company Wham-O made toys. In 2010, the company opened an even bigger factory in Irwindale, California. This factory is on 23 acres of land. It has 26,000 square feet for offices, 150,000 square feet for making products, and 480,000 square feet for storage. This Irwindale factory is now where all three of the brand's sauces are made.
The machines used to make the sauces were specially changed by David Tran. He taught himself how to work with machines and how to weld. Since 2014, the Irwindale factory has been open for people to visit. It has become a popular place for tourists.
In October 2013, the city of Irwindale had a problem with the chili smell coming from the factory. Some neighbors were upset by the strong odor. The city filed a lawsuit against Huy Fong Foods, saying the smell was a problem for the public. A judge at first did not order the factory to close. But less than a month later, the judge told the factory to partially shut down. The city stopped the lawsuit on May 29, 2014. This happened after a meeting between the city and the company, arranged by the governor at the time, Jerry Brown.
When Huy Fong Foods makes its sauces, they start by buying chilies. These chilies are grown in Ventura, Los Angeles, and Kern counties in California. The company then makes a thick paste from these chilies. Most of the chili paste for the year is made in just two months, during the autumn harvest. The company used to use serrano chilies. But they found these chilies hard to harvest. The final sauce made from the natural chili paste does not have any artificial ingredients.
The company has never paid for advertisements for its products. Instead, they rely on people telling others about the sauces. This is called word of mouth. The amount of sauce they make and sell is very large. In 2001, the company was thought to have sold 6,000 tons of chili products. This brought in about $12 million in sales. By 2010, the company was making 20 million bottles of sauce in a year. By 2012, their sales had grown to more than $60 million a year. In 2019, the company had 10% of the hot sauce market in the United States, which was worth $1.55 billion. In 2022, the company made over $150 million in sales.
The company has also told customers to be careful about fake versions of its sauces.
Getting Peppers for the Sauce
In 1988, Huy Fong Foods started working with Underwood Ranches. This farm is in Ventura County. The owner of Underwood Ranches, Craig Underwood, offered to grow jalapeños for Huy Fong Foods. This partnership lasted for 28 years. At first, Huy Fong Foods needed more peppers than Underwood Ranches could grow. So, they worked with other farmers too. As Huy Fong Foods became more successful, Underwood Ranches grew more and more peppers. By 2006, Underwood Ranches was growing 95% of the peppers used by Huy Fong Foods.
Huy Fong Foods' partnership with Underwood Ranches ended in 2016. This happened after David Tran tried to get Underwood Ranches' chief operations officer to work for a new company Tran formed called Chilico. This new company would get and manage the peppers for Huy Fong Foods. Tran also tried to greatly cut the payments to the ranch. Underwood Ranches said this left them with no choice but to end their agreement. Huy Fong Foods then sued Underwood Ranches. They wanted $1.4 million back for payments they had made in 2016. Underwood Ranches also sued Huy Fong Foods. They said Huy Fong Foods broke their contract and made false promises. A jury decided that Huy Fong Foods had broken the contract and committed fraud. Huy Fong Foods was ordered to pay Underwood Ranches $23.3 million.
In June 2022, Huy Fong Foods temporarily stopped making chili sauce. This was because there was a big shortage of chili peppers. A dry spell in Mexico had affected the quality of the peppers. Production started again in the fall. However, in April 2023, the company announced another "unprecedented inventory shortage." They could not say when this shortage would end. A TV program in August 2023 said that the shortage happened because Huy Fong Foods changed pepper suppliers. This was because Underwood Ranches still had the ability to grow and process the peppers needed.
Awards and Special Mentions
In December 2009, Bon Appétit magazine said that Huy Fong Foods' Sriracha sauce was the "Ingredient of the Year" for 2010. Huy Fong also won two awards, including the 2017 FABI culinary award. This award was given in Chicago at the National Restaurant Association.
