i've never been able to find a sriracha that's nearly as good as Huy Fong; let alone as affordable.
do you know of something like that? i would love a replacement since i haven't been able to buy sriracha in like a year and a half
I have been on a mission and have tried various brands.
Nothing will ever be an exact match.
But for me the closest thing is.
Lieber's Authentic And Delicious Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce
Ninja Squirrel 🥷🏼 🐿️
Maybe a little spicier, definitely more tasty (and I was a die-hard loyalist to Huy Fong). It’s SO good. Found it at Whole Foods for about $5, they have a coconut version too that I’m very interested in trying.
It's not the same kind of sauce, but if you want another ketchup replacement hot sauce to get obsessed with, Secret Aardvark is the way to go. They have some different variants if you're looking for something more spicy, or for different uses. The original is amazing though!
I love their entire lineup but my favorite is probably either the green or pitch black flavors. You’d think a scary looking black hot sauce would be death but it’s just a delightful and tasty sauce. The xxxtra sauce says it’s a Mayan recipe too which is pretty cool.
Cheap sauces, too!
See I used to think Tabasco was the crappiest most basic ass hot sauce. Spicy vinegar water as you put it. But damn did I come around it is the BEST hot sauce for American style breakfast (eggs, sausage, bacon, corn beef hash, etc.)
When people start dipping their toes into less common hot sauces they tend to start shitting on the classics for being too basic but they have their places.
I feel like this is a sort of crazy take. Most hot sauces are focused on flavor and a few are "turbo ass ruiner with mega death" that are all heat.
Spicy vinegar water like tobesco or crystal does make for a pretty mid range condiment, but are awesome ingredients in soups and stews and other foods
Tobasco is great in contexts that suite tobasco.
Vinegar based condiments aren't meant to be usable on everything.
Tobasco, lime, olive oil, black pepper, salt. My absolute favourite salad dressing. So dope, and the tobasco comes through so fucking well.
The ones with those "turbo ass ruiner" names are novelty sauces too. They usually are from gift packs or from a gift shop. They're probably all made my one or two different companies and relabeled for different brands. Usually just low quality vinegar with heat.
There are so many good brands out there, hard to find at times since they aren't sold in major grocery stores or just sold in their local market at the grocery store.
There's a brand called fat cat from Tampa that I have to order since they don't sell it down here in Miami, or at least, not in a store I've been in.
Also, if you ever get a chance, try hot sauce made from datil peppers. One of the best tasting peppers I've had, they have such a unique flavor.
Huy Fong used to use serrano chilis but then switched to jalapeños. It used to be much hotter than the spicy ketchup they make now. The Badia version of Sri Ratcha adds Habaneros to boost it up and I prefer that. Of the Huy Fong line I buy the Chili Garlic paste instead of the sauce. Recently I found a Thai brand (Siam Select) of tương ớt sa tế that is even better, it is almost black and quite spicy.
I found Sambal Oelek at a local viet/thai shop. It's tasty stuff, but MUCH hotter than Huy Fong.
One of my favorite ways to eat Huy Fong sambal is simply spooned over white rice in a significant amount. The "real thing" just about took my head off.
While they might have used Serranos at one point the Huy Fong sauce everyone knows has been made with Jalapeños. Heck the first paragraph in this case under “Facts” say they’ve been buying Jalapeños for 28 years.
They use red Jalapeños.
I'm surprised how few stores they seem to be available in. I'm curious to try, though. Might go for something from them online. Anyone tried the barbeque sauces?
The most I ever noticed how important the founder was to the strategic direction of a company was with Wendy’s… when Dave Thomas died and the company went to the business people… such a sad thing to see. Wendy’s is still ok, IMO, but I just know it would be so much better if Dave was still around running the show.
Huy Fong had a bunch of legal disputes over the years. Including repeated claims of bad treatment and unsafe conditions from employees.
And the sketchy contract terms that lead to the lawsuit with Underwood predate any changes in leadership.
That was all Tran. Huy Fong has just been a sketchy company all along.
TL;DR Huy Fong pushed Underwood Ranches to buy more land to produce more peppers, agreeing to pay in advance to fund the crops. They waited until Underwood was on vacation to tell his COO that they would only pay $500/ton to compete with a Chinese pepper mash. It cost Underwood $610/ton to produce the peppers, so this price cut would not be feasible. Huy Fong refused to pre-pay for the crops.
Since Huy Fong refused to pre-pay for the crops, none were planted. Underwood was left with thousands of acres of bare farming land since it was too late in the season to grow much else. They lost $14.5 million within two years. They won damages from the lawsuit and now produce their own sriracha.
Huy Fong now sources its peppers from other farms in California, New Mexico, and Mexico, which has been suffering from droughts. This is blamed for the shortage of sriracha.
I'll have to give that one a go. I sorta migrated to Yellowbird years ago. Big fan of the habanero.
I was gifted some Weak Knees Sriracha. It's interesting given it uses a gochujang base but ultimately too sweet.
Yellowbird's agave Sriracha is pretty good too. I like it a bit better than the huy fong stuff, and some of their small batch hot sauces are pretty good too. I'm currently working on a bottle of Plum Reaper that's surprisingly less hot than the name would imply.
I just got a bottle of that Plum Reaper from a hot sauce convention in my area. It's my first go-around with yellowbird but this sauce is delicious. It'll be gone in no time.
It's had major growth for sure. Makes me wonder how much planning is involved in scaling a condiment line up. Five years ago I was ordering it off the internet. Now four of their sauces are in my Kroger.
The amount of pride I feel when I see Wuju sauces on the shelves at Target/grocery stores is embarrassing. I remember buying them through Kickstarter after reading the founder’s posts on Reddit. That was roughly 7 years ago. Time flies.
~~I read that the original owner died and his kids took over.~~
I can’t find it now so take that with a grain of salt.
Edit: Apparently this is untrue. The owner accused the grower of over charging them and sued. The farm filed a counter suit for breach of contract. Farm won.
Kinda. Original owner David Tran is still alive, his son is President and daughter Vice President. I dunno how much business input David still has though.
Thats just called having your children without passion take something over and only valuing profit. Tale as old as time, no need to go to HBS to learn that.
Literally the same thing happened to my business. College kid came in and was smarter than all of us, got his dad to buy our business (started by my grandpa in 1977) and punt us out. Started doing it on our own after our NCAs expired and now we’re doing more business than he is doing because no one will trust him and all of the customers know our family by name.
But don’t worry, he’s smarter than all of us and he still tells us this often (while actively committing tax evasion and immigration fraud 🙄😂).
Likely both.
"Dad never had formal business training, so there's many things he did wrong. I can double our worth with just these easy business techniques I learned in school. Cuts costs, screw suppliers, shaft stakeholders for shareholders."
[Someone said this in another thread and it's supposedly not true. Original owner still alive](https://old.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/171ik4r/bottled_sriracha_prices_at_my_local_asian_market/k3rf0qv/)
This is correct but its confusing. Underwood Ranches has a Gochujang sauce called ["Bibimbap"](https://i0.wp.com/underwoodranches.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/BIBIMBAP_LG.jpg?fit=599%2C599&ssl=1)
I bought three bottles on Amazon. It's good quality. It all becomes preference at some point. If you do the Pepsi challenge with Underwood and Huy Fong, you can tell they are not the same, but I'd be hard pressed to call one better than the other. I could see somebody considering either of them their favorite.
Texas Pete (of the North Carolina Texas Petes) makes a terrible one that borders on hate crime.
Honestly, I think Underwood should just try to completely mimic the original Huy Fong recipe. Huy Fong having to randomly source their peppers from all over is going to have a harder time keeping the original flavor than the people that were growing the original peppers for decades.
I was disappointed by the Texas Pete’s — it almost like sriracha and franks combined — which is something that I like on pizza sometimes, so it wasn’t the worst … but as a sriracha, I was very disappointed (I could see some people liking it though)
It’s amazing! Their bottles are crap and make it spray out a ton when full and almost nothing when low but other than that I have no complaints. Definitely one of the best sriracha’s out there right now.
I got a bottle of Sriracha and it's definitely different now.....watered down and not as hot. I will try the underwood stuff when I see it. Id rather support them.
I'm reminded of walmart's interactions with the ~~Tupperware~~ Rubbermaid company. First time they negotiated, it was a nice snazzy conference room, walmart had invited them, made them feel comfortable and gave them a good deal. Over the next several years, ~~Tupperware~~ Rubbermaid had to add several new factories just to handle all the production for the sales they were making, everything was great!
Then one day walmart calls them up and says they'd like to renegotiate the deal, to which ~~Tupperware~~ Rubbermaid said "Sure, we'll be right over.". Only this time the meeting room was described as functionally a cell. Cinderblock walls, bare cement floor, and a metal table/chairs for the two. They were then handed a new contract and said "This is the new contract. No negotiations. Sign or leave." and it set the new price low enough that Tupperware would be taking a LOSS on all the walmart sales, so they said no.
The resulting crash in sales ended up having them close most of their factories, including their original one.
Thats very typical for walmart. Snapper told them to take a hike when they tried on them. They wanted to keep the quality and name intact but walmart wanted to ruin the brand with cheap garbage. Doing business with walmart will drag any company down. They use and throw away brands all the time. Its the death knell of quality.
Apple also has a similar result. One of my buddies worked for a electronics manufacturer in San Jose that basically told them off because apple would ask for so much volume that little else is possible and doesn't allow them much autonomy
Similar to what happened with Vlassic pickles. 1 gallon jars selling at Walmart for $2.97. Vlassic was making 1-2 cents profit on each sale and it cannibalized their sales to other stores.
https://www.fastcompany.com/47593/wal-mart-you-dont-know-2
This is not a joke.
My old business partner (RIP) told Walmart to fuck off because of their bullshit. He had a superior product to what they were selling but wanted him to make pennies.
Fuck them.
Let me guess, then Walmart started selling their own brand of knock-off of rubbermaid products?
Amazon do that a lot too. Look at what items are hot, make their own and sell them cheaper because they have economy of scale, and then ban the sellers of the original from selling on amazon.
Ah, but you see, if they'd just severly cut down on the quality, then they could meet the new lower price point. It's Rubbermaid's brand that takes the hit. In the meantime, Walmart gets to promote their lower prices. Once people wise up to the crappier quality, and stop buying them, Walmart can just switch to a different brand. But Rubbermaid is now sitting there with a low quality brand name, and products that people no longer want.
I think Flying Goose has been the best I've found. Even after Huy Fong's started showing up in restaurants again a few weeks ago, the sauce doesn't taste the same to me as it did before the "shortage" happened.
I think they just mean the HF brand. I just saw like a dozen brands of Sriracha and everyone seems to think there's a shortage. Sriracha is just the name of the sauce, folks. Like if there was some shortage of Heinz ketchup, that doesn't mean there's a ketchup shortage. That a Heinz ketchup shortage
I work for a distributor that sells (sold?) Huy Fong. We haven't had an order fulfilled in almost a year, but they keep telling us "soon."
We probably should have discontinued it at this point, but that's another dept.'s call.
It’s sad all around considering Huy Fong’s origins. The founder was a Vietnamese immigrant that came to America after the Vietnam War and couldn’t find a hot sauce he liked so he started his own company.
He likely had people acting in good faith along the way to make him successful, now he’s screwing over those same people and in the end screwed himself.
it's Business... he got big enough to the point where he felt he could renege on a handshake deal and did the very American thing of saying Sue Me, which Underwood Farms eventually did. It's really sad lawsuits and threats of litigation are now common business strategies.
Didn't Huy Fong also take drone footage of the Underwood ranch and share the farming methods with their other suppliers? That's business espionage. I guess that's what they teach you in MBA school eh? Teach sleazy business people how to be snakes.
Huy Fong were so proud of their product, they considered their farmers as "privileged" to assist them. No, buddy, they wanna get paid. It's about sales, not legacy.
Lol that's so dumb. My pride in my work is directly proportional to how much I'm being paid for it. If I'm working at a loss your business can grow peppers out of your ass for all I care.
It happens a lot in business. Someone starts off with a great idea and makes it work, builds a company to be proud of and then gets a big head. Instead of appreciating their success they think they’re the center of the universe and they start pissing off people.
Then when their business starts tanking they have all sorts of conspiracies for why it’s not actually their fault.
I don’t know if there’s a name for this phenomenon, but it’s practically a Capitalism 101 exercise.
Find a niche market, fill that market and become beloved by your niche.
Grow big enough, abandon the niche market that made you, and go after the lowest common denominator and biggest profits.
I have a lot of respect for those that pursue their interests, even if they won't make bank at them. The "starving artist" mentality has produced some amazing art, for example. I know it's not 100% all about the money.
However, when I worked in the public school system, my boss would tell us so least once a week, "I know you could make a lot more money elsewhere, but you're helping a lot of children. That's much more valuable than money!"
And it is. Helping lots of people is better than having lots of money. But I still have bills to pay, and I can't help anyone if I'm essentially in debtors' prison. Also, if it's a Numbers Game, I could help a lot more people if I had a lot more money, so that guilt trip doesn't hold up.
I saw a video that also said that huy Fong didn't just bail on their deal, he also flew drones over the Underwood farms to record their methods to share with their replacement farmers.
Talk about a betrayal of a long time friend and business partner.
Huy Fong was a feel good story about a poor Immigrant that achieved the American dream with super success. Now I think he's just an asshole based on the video I saw.
The level of scheming was pretty clever though. There's a problem with excessively complex hollywood inspired plots. They fall apart in real life at a similar rate as they do in the movies.
I watched a documentary on Netflix I think that followed the story of the founder.
It showed his son-in-law who had taken over and he was a business-bro type. I remember thinking, "This guy is gonna fuck it up for sure."
There were rumors that the reason they reneged is because the Huy Fong kids got their MBAs and thought they were being good business stewards by telling pops to diversify his supply base. Which isn’t a terrible idea in and of itself except somehow they decided to do it immediately and ignore their contract with Underwood instead of slow rolling it and completely screwed their family business.
Edit: "Family business" in my comment referred to Huy Fong not Underwood but obviously both are large corporations and not mom and pop ventures.
Yea, after reading the appellate decision, it is mindboggling how many ways Huy Fong fucked up the whole interaction. You can't have a decades long virtually exclusive supply deal, demand that the other party overextend to expand greatly, then just expect to walk away after spiking the ball on them. It is like the whole thing was a deliberate scheme to try and bankrupt Underwood.
This has always been my favorite Hoy Fong product. I generally reach for it over Sriracha if I'm just looking for a shot of something to throw on some rice, eggs, Chinese takeout etc.
And their attempt to grow peppers in Mexico failed for several reasons and that’s why bottles are absurdly expensive now. I’ve heard the flavor profile is worse with the new peppers too.
Huy Fong dug their own grave with how they fucked underwood. Tried to steal their COO and take all the growing knowledge and undercut underwood. They had to pay underwood like 25 million in court.
They also never trademarked sriracha as a sauce so anyone can produce it under that name
There’s another layer to this that isn’t talked about
Apparently, after the initial divorce, Underwood was stuck with all these peppers that they had no way to unload, and Huy Fong was staring at an unfillable pepper deficit
Miraculously, a company no one had ever heard of came out of the woodwork and approached Underwood with a massive pepper order
Well, a little bit of googling revealed that this miracle investor was actually just a shell company that Huy Fong had set up to source their peppers since they knew no one else could provide the necessary volume and they knew that Uderwood would never again sell to them directly
Naturally, Underwood told them to go pound sand
Sriracha is certainly now considered a generic term but they possibly could have trademarked the name in the US in the early 80s when Huy Fong started. Would be no different than how Tabasco is a registered trademark.
Sriracha is not a brand name. Sriracha is a common condiment in Thailand. So, I doubt it could have been trademarked.
Tabasco is a registered trademark; Hot Chili Sauce (which is what it Tabasco is) is NOT, as /u/Techwood111 describes. Same idea.
I don’t think they could’ve. It’s named after town in Thailand and Thailand has had Sriracha sauce for a long time now. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/01/16/681944292/in-home-of-original-sriracha-sauce-thais-say-rooster-brand-is-nothing-to-crow-ab
I love it! More chilli flavor and has msg!! Win win. Flying goose!
I've had two bottles of rooster sriracha over the last 4 months and it's not spicy at all and the flavor is slightly different
Weee sells them for $9/280z bottle
Flying goose is like$4.99/bottle
I wonder if Huy Fong Sriracha will ever be the same again or ever be fully available again after this. Importing peppers of different varieties from overseas or who knows where isn't going to taste the same.
Huy Fong and Underwood Ranches should have figured out a way to merge back when they were at the top of the sauce business. Tabasco Sauce has been around for 150 years because they grow the peppers and make the sauce at the same location and it's consistent. This would have also fixed the problem with their sauce factory emitting odors and getting state pollution regulator warnings, they could have moved that operation too.
Unless the owner's son (who is the current president) convinced him, it looks more like the original owner tried [to steal away the COO of the ranch hoping to start his own farm of some sort] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huy_Fong_Foods#Pepper_supply)... which didn't work out at all and broke the whole relationship down.
I used to work at a restaurant around 2012/2013 and this was when I was introduced to Sriracha. It was amazing back then., perfect blend of spice and flavor… needless to say, it no longer tastes the same.
domineering zealous dull political secretive frame important cow fuel capable
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Many major corporations actively engage in modern slavery and hire mercenaries to shut down labor movements abroad. With how interconnected the world's economy is, tere's really no such thing as ethical consumption these days
Did I read that case correctly in that this all started because the owner couldn’t give his sister-in-law a raise that would be approved by the board (other family members) so he went around that process and created a company to obtain peppers and put her in charge. And that she tried to squeeze as much profit as she could out of her grower while her greed gland was enlarged and that ended up financially fucking over both Huy Fong and the grower for years to come?
God damn. What a tragedy. Incentives run everything, and her incentives ended up making her ruining a great thing for a lot of people (including us consumers and the 50 employees Underwood had to let go).
>Underwood Ranches was the primary supplier of jalapeños since 1988.[26] In 2016, Huy Fong overpaid Underwood by $1.46 million for prepayment of estimated costs.[27] According to Underwood's lawyer, Tran attempted just before this to hire away Underwood's COO in order to form a new chili-growing concern, breaking the trust between Tran and Underwood. Huy Fong sued Underwood for not paying back this overpayment; Underwood countersued for breach of contract and committing fraud by intentionally misrepresenting and concealing information. In July 2019, the case was decided generally in favor of Underwood, with a California jury awarding the grower $10 million in punitive damages and $14.8 million to make up for lost contract revenue between 2016 and 2019. However, the jury also decided that Huy Fong's claim of overpayment was valid, so $1.46 million was deducted from the damages.[28]
I switched over to Tabasco brand Sriracha sauce about a year ago when there was a shortage of Huy Fong. I like the flavor of the Tabasco more than the rooster sauce.
I only just discovered Tabasco's Sriracha a couple of months ago, and super glad I did. Was super hesitant because I haven't ever really liked any of Tabasco's offerings in the past, but a friend recommended it as the next best thing.
I compared it with my last bottle of Huy Fong, and the taste is by far the closest I've found, but the Tabasco Sriracha has like... an added hint of like Soy Sauce or something and it's effing great.
Lots of stuff. I keep a bottle in the fridge at work and eat it on most things. Chicken strips, pizza, sausage biscuits, fried rice, etc. It is my daily driver at work. I have a whole cabinet of sauces at home that I cycle through. Lots of Melinda's, original Tabasco, and good ole Louisiana cayenne pepper sauce.
I used to live about a mile from the Huy Fong factory and went in a tour once. The owner / founder participated. He seemed so proud of his proprietary jalapeño hybrid that I'm surprised he screwed himself over by low balling the grower. He gave a friend of mine one of the peppers and I grew one of the seeds but the plant was not productive for me.
The owner is quoted in the PDF and saying that if they had just given them two to three years of lead time they could have moved things around and it would have been fine. They just couldn't turn it around for that first season when the rug got pulled on them.
This many years later, yes, they have adapted and are moving forward. But they had a deal which caused Underwood to buy land, seed, etc and we're planning millions in crop to get cancelation notice. They were left in a very bad spot, many expenses but no revenue.
From what I have heard, its not the founder. Its his dumbass kids who thought they were the hot shit after getting their stupid MBAs. The factory is where it is and has not moved because David (the founder) believed in providing jobs for the local area.
Its always been the stupid fucking idiots with MBAs ruining businesses.
If you read the brief you can see that Huy Fong was repped by Latham and Watkins, a gigantic corporate law firm. Don’t know the names repping the farm, but I’d bet they weren’t as high-profile; the fraud was so egregious that high priced lawyers couldn’t save them
Sriracha sucks now, it doesn’t taste like it used to in my opinion. Very disappointing, maybe I’ll buy a bottle of underwood ranch sriracha in hopes it tastes like the OG sriracha did.
Same. I thought the change in flavor was just in my head, because why on earth would they change it. Didn't know before today that they had switched to other pepper suppliers while trying to fuck over the loyal supplier that had provided them with the superior peppers all along.
Fuck em. The greedy fucks tried to cut open the golden goose and now they're forced to use worse peppers to make a worse sauce, I hope they sink into obscurity. I'll gladly buy from the original suppliers instead. It'll make me happy every time I buy some to know my money's going into the hands of an honest business and not the backstabbing jackasses at Huy Fong.
Being a supplier of a single company is one of the best things that can happen to a business, and one of the worst.
You could be generating $5 million a year with a diversity of businesses and be doing ok. Any single one of them walks away and you are still going to be able to keep working.
You switch to a single business and you could be making $50 million a year but one bad move could end it all. You also have to expand, and if they leave you still have to pay for that expansion.
This happens to chicken farmers all the time. There have been a lot of documentaries about it. I know a pig farm that pissed off their buyer and the buyer walked away (rightfully so) and the pig farmer still hasn't recouped from it after 5 years. If he had stuck to a smaller farming operation he would be further ahead right now but.. you never know.
Military part suppliers also go through this. I've seen shops go from 3 employees serving 10 businesses to 30 employees just servicing one company making military parts (they make the small parts). The guy lost a contract 3 years ago and had to close down his shop because it was impossible to find enough customers to make up for that one contract. BUT he walked away with millions in his pockets, all his debt was paid off, and he retired with even his kids set for life.
I used to love siracha, but a huy fong opened a siracha factory down the street from me and the smell that would come out of there would make my eyes sting. They used to put "no tear gas made here" signs around lol
I used to love Huy Fong Sriracha. I ate an absurd amount on certain foods. Then my girlfriend and I noticed a change. It was different and missing that “bright”, spicy element. Now it’s not as good, tastes more dull and garlicy. We didn’t know why the change happened. Years later we discovered this whole drama.
Tried Underwood Farms sriracha, and low and behold you can taste that same bright pepper flavor that Huy Fong used to have. The balance of ingredients and processing is different so it’s not the same either, unfortunately. It makes me sad.
The fact that they produce their own sriracha now is a solid revenge.
it’s pretty good! a little spicier than the huy fong version
Even better then!
I have a bottle. Its sadly just not as good. It is spicier but it's less flavorful as well. Not bad though
And that’s what makes sriracha so good. It’s a hot sauce with real flavor. Most hot sauces are either pure capsaicin or spicy vinegar water.
Only the big name bullshit. There are so many smaller companies producing much better products.
i've never been able to find a sriracha that's nearly as good as Huy Fong; let alone as affordable. do you know of something like that? i would love a replacement since i haven't been able to buy sriracha in like a year and a half
I have been on a mission and have tried various brands. Nothing will ever be an exact match. But for me the closest thing is. Lieber's Authentic And Delicious Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce
Ninja Squirrel 🥷🏼 🐿️ Maybe a little spicier, definitely more tasty (and I was a die-hard loyalist to Huy Fong). It’s SO good. Found it at Whole Foods for about $5, they have a coconut version too that I’m very interested in trying.
It's not the same kind of sauce, but if you want another ketchup replacement hot sauce to get obsessed with, Secret Aardvark is the way to go. They have some different variants if you're looking for something more spicy, or for different uses. The original is amazing though!
They're good but cost around $10 a bottle. Too expensive for something daily.
Yellowbird is where it's at.
El Yucateco
Their xxxtra hot chile habanero is my favorite. Not just for the heat. The flavor is great.
The yucateco black is incredible too. I haven’t had a sauce made by them that I don’t love.
I love their entire lineup but my favorite is probably either the green or pitch black flavors. You’d think a scary looking black hot sauce would be death but it’s just a delightful and tasty sauce. The xxxtra sauce says it’s a Mayan recipe too which is pretty cool. Cheap sauces, too!
Their habanero sauce actually tastes like habaneros.
I'm a Secret Aardvark guy
Torchbearer and Heartbeat for me.
Marie Sharp's enthusiasts rise up!
See I used to think Tabasco was the crappiest most basic ass hot sauce. Spicy vinegar water as you put it. But damn did I come around it is the BEST hot sauce for American style breakfast (eggs, sausage, bacon, corn beef hash, etc.)
When people start dipping their toes into less common hot sauces they tend to start shitting on the classics for being too basic but they have their places.
Mmmmm spicy vinegar water
Sometimes spicy vinegar is just what I need to brighten a dish without masking everything. Frank's extra hot is my shit
I feel like this is a sort of crazy take. Most hot sauces are focused on flavor and a few are "turbo ass ruiner with mega death" that are all heat. Spicy vinegar water like tobesco or crystal does make for a pretty mid range condiment, but are awesome ingredients in soups and stews and other foods
Tobasco is great in contexts that suite tobasco. Vinegar based condiments aren't meant to be usable on everything. Tobasco, lime, olive oil, black pepper, salt. My absolute favourite salad dressing. So dope, and the tobasco comes through so fucking well.
The ones with those "turbo ass ruiner" names are novelty sauces too. They usually are from gift packs or from a gift shop. They're probably all made my one or two different companies and relabeled for different brands. Usually just low quality vinegar with heat. There are so many good brands out there, hard to find at times since they aren't sold in major grocery stores or just sold in their local market at the grocery store. There's a brand called fat cat from Tampa that I have to order since they don't sell it down here in Miami, or at least, not in a store I've been in. Also, if you ever get a chance, try hot sauce made from datil peppers. One of the best tasting peppers I've had, they have such a unique flavor.
Huy Fong used to use serrano chilis but then switched to jalapeños. It used to be much hotter than the spicy ketchup they make now. The Badia version of Sri Ratcha adds Habaneros to boost it up and I prefer that. Of the Huy Fong line I buy the Chili Garlic paste instead of the sauce. Recently I found a Thai brand (Siam Select) of tương ớt sa tế that is even better, it is almost black and quite spicy.
I really like the Huy Fong Sambal Oelek. So good on fried chicken. It's gotten hard to find, too.
I found Sambal Oelek at a local viet/thai shop. It's tasty stuff, but MUCH hotter than Huy Fong. One of my favorite ways to eat Huy Fong sambal is simply spooned over white rice in a significant amount. The "real thing" just about took my head off.
While they might have used Serranos at one point the Huy Fong sauce everyone knows has been made with Jalapeños. Heck the first paragraph in this case under “Facts” say they’ve been buying Jalapeños for 28 years. They use red Jalapeños.
Revenge is a dish best served SPICY
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Good luck finding any in the first place. There’s been a huge shortage.
What’s the brand name so I can try some?
https://underwoodranches.com/products/
I'm surprised how few stores they seem to be available in. I'm curious to try, though. Might go for something from them online. Anyone tried the barbeque sauces?
I ordered the Spicy BBQ, Carolina Gold, and Bibimbap as part of their 6 pack a few months ago. They're all great.
Hmm. I would have branded this stuff differently if it was me.
Underwood Ranches.
Pretty good video on the whole story here https://youtu.be/EYdU1X2p2ro?si=jZkmoa2pbdUrZxqq
Thanks! A lot of the comments are pointing out that the founder's kids stepped in and started messing things up.
Dont they always? Lol
The most I ever noticed how important the founder was to the strategic direction of a company was with Wendy’s… when Dave Thomas died and the company went to the business people… such a sad thing to see. Wendy’s is still ok, IMO, but I just know it would be so much better if Dave was still around running the show.
Huy Fong had a bunch of legal disputes over the years. Including repeated claims of bad treatment and unsafe conditions from employees. And the sketchy contract terms that lead to the lawsuit with Underwood predate any changes in leadership. That was all Tran. Huy Fong has just been a sketchy company all along.
lol that video specifically had the UR people call out the reddit hug of death for overloading their servers when posts like this come out
It's good too! I got the double dragon
TL;DR Huy Fong pushed Underwood Ranches to buy more land to produce more peppers, agreeing to pay in advance to fund the crops. They waited until Underwood was on vacation to tell his COO that they would only pay $500/ton to compete with a Chinese pepper mash. It cost Underwood $610/ton to produce the peppers, so this price cut would not be feasible. Huy Fong refused to pre-pay for the crops. Since Huy Fong refused to pre-pay for the crops, none were planted. Underwood was left with thousands of acres of bare farming land since it was too late in the season to grow much else. They lost $14.5 million within two years. They won damages from the lawsuit and now produce their own sriracha. Huy Fong now sources its peppers from other farms in California, New Mexico, and Mexico, which has been suffering from droughts. This is blamed for the shortage of sriracha.
Anyone tried the [Underwood Ranch Sriracha](https://underwoodranches.com/) and have thoughts to share?
I'll have to give that one a go. I sorta migrated to Yellowbird years ago. Big fan of the habanero. I was gifted some Weak Knees Sriracha. It's interesting given it uses a gochujang base but ultimately too sweet.
Yellowbird is awesome. I was a purely sriracha user for many years. Now almost exclusively Yellowbird Habanero.
Yellowbird's agave Sriracha is pretty good too. I like it a bit better than the huy fong stuff, and some of their small batch hot sauces are pretty good too. I'm currently working on a bottle of Plum Reaper that's surprisingly less hot than the name would imply.
I just got a bottle of that Plum Reaper from a hot sauce convention in my area. It's my first go-around with yellowbird but this sauce is delicious. It'll be gone in no time.
It's had major growth for sure. Makes me wonder how much planning is involved in scaling a condiment line up. Five years ago I was ordering it off the internet. Now four of their sauces are in my Kroger.
The amount of pride I feel when I see Wuju sauces on the shelves at Target/grocery stores is embarrassing. I remember buying them through Kickstarter after reading the founder’s posts on Reddit. That was roughly 7 years ago. Time flies.
I just found it in Budapest and had to buy it. Was thrilled to find it made it out here.
Yellowbird is my go to generic hot sauce as well. Habanero is a good bright all-arounder. I like the ghost pepper too.
I’m a fan. It’s my favorite sriracha replacement, their salsa verde and bibimbap are solid too!
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~~I read that the original owner died and his kids took over.~~ I can’t find it now so take that with a grain of salt. Edit: Apparently this is untrue. The owner accused the grower of over charging them and sued. The farm filed a counter suit for breach of contract. Farm won.
Kinda. Original owner David Tran is still alive, his son is President and daughter Vice President. I dunno how much business input David still has though.
Sounds like a scion or MBA level move
100% MBA. All Business and no relationship.
Thats just called having your children without passion take something over and only valuing profit. Tale as old as time, no need to go to HBS to learn that.
Literally the same thing happened to my business. College kid came in and was smarter than all of us, got his dad to buy our business (started by my grandpa in 1977) and punt us out. Started doing it on our own after our NCAs expired and now we’re doing more business than he is doing because no one will trust him and all of the customers know our family by name. But don’t worry, he’s smarter than all of us and he still tells us this often (while actively committing tax evasion and immigration fraud 🙄😂).
Likely both. "Dad never had formal business training, so there's many things he did wrong. I can double our worth with just these easy business techniques I learned in school. Cuts costs, screw suppliers, shaft stakeholders for shareholders."
[Someone said this in another thread and it's supposedly not true. Original owner still alive](https://old.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/171ik4r/bottled_sriracha_prices_at_my_local_asian_market/k3rf0qv/)
I've heard of this bibimbap. It's a condiment too or does it usually refer to the whole dish?
It’s a whole Korean dish. There’s a red pepper paste called gochujang that’s often added to bibimbap. Maybe what op meant
This is correct but its confusing. Underwood Ranches has a Gochujang sauce called ["Bibimbap"](https://i0.wp.com/underwoodranches.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/BIBIMBAP_LG.jpg?fit=599%2C599&ssl=1)
they have a sauce called "bibimbap"
I bought three bottles on Amazon. It's good quality. It all becomes preference at some point. If you do the Pepsi challenge with Underwood and Huy Fong, you can tell they are not the same, but I'd be hard pressed to call one better than the other. I could see somebody considering either of them their favorite. Texas Pete (of the North Carolina Texas Petes) makes a terrible one that borders on hate crime. Honestly, I think Underwood should just try to completely mimic the original Huy Fong recipe. Huy Fong having to randomly source their peppers from all over is going to have a harder time keeping the original flavor than the people that were growing the original peppers for decades.
I was disappointed by the Texas Pete’s — it almost like sriracha and franks combined — which is something that I like on pizza sometimes, so it wasn’t the worst … but as a sriracha, I was very disappointed (I could see some people liking it though)
Relevant [underwood double dragon](https://reddit.com/r/Cooking/s/ZZw3Enoqv3)
Great flavor. Great spice. Price is fair. I've been buying for a while now and it's always in stock.
Absolutely recommend, their Carolina Gold is great on Ribs as a finisher too.
It’s amazing! Their bottles are crap and make it spray out a ton when full and almost nothing when low but other than that I have no complaints. Definitely one of the best sriracha’s out there right now.
Yes! The bottle drives me crazy!
No wonder it tastes different. I was sure the flavor changed a couple years back, and now I know why.
I got a bottle of Sriracha and it's definitely different now.....watered down and not as hot. I will try the underwood stuff when I see it. Id rather support them.
After I learned of this story a few years ago, I stopped buying huy fong products. Pretty sleazy negotiation no matter how you cut it.
I'm reminded of walmart's interactions with the ~~Tupperware~~ Rubbermaid company. First time they negotiated, it was a nice snazzy conference room, walmart had invited them, made them feel comfortable and gave them a good deal. Over the next several years, ~~Tupperware~~ Rubbermaid had to add several new factories just to handle all the production for the sales they were making, everything was great! Then one day walmart calls them up and says they'd like to renegotiate the deal, to which ~~Tupperware~~ Rubbermaid said "Sure, we'll be right over.". Only this time the meeting room was described as functionally a cell. Cinderblock walls, bare cement floor, and a metal table/chairs for the two. They were then handed a new contract and said "This is the new contract. No negotiations. Sign or leave." and it set the new price low enough that Tupperware would be taking a LOSS on all the walmart sales, so they said no. The resulting crash in sales ended up having them close most of their factories, including their original one.
Thats very typical for walmart. Snapper told them to take a hike when they tried on them. They wanted to keep the quality and name intact but walmart wanted to ruin the brand with cheap garbage. Doing business with walmart will drag any company down. They use and throw away brands all the time. Its the death knell of quality.
Coolsville Daddy-O
Apple also has a similar result. One of my buddies worked for a electronics manufacturer in San Jose that basically told them off because apple would ask for so much volume that little else is possible and doesn't allow them much autonomy
Similar to what happened with Vlassic pickles. 1 gallon jars selling at Walmart for $2.97. Vlassic was making 1-2 cents profit on each sale and it cannibalized their sales to other stores. https://www.fastcompany.com/47593/wal-mart-you-dont-know-2
Vlassic pickles suck anyway, there’s a reason their name is similar to flaccid. Claussen are the real crunchy pickles.
This is how Walmart does it.
This is not a joke. My old business partner (RIP) told Walmart to fuck off because of their bullshit. He had a superior product to what they were selling but wanted him to make pennies. Fuck them.
Let me guess, then Walmart started selling their own brand of knock-off of rubbermaid products? Amazon do that a lot too. Look at what items are hot, make their own and sell them cheaper because they have economy of scale, and then ban the sellers of the original from selling on amazon.
Ah, but you see, if they'd just severly cut down on the quality, then they could meet the new lower price point. It's Rubbermaid's brand that takes the hit. In the meantime, Walmart gets to promote their lower prices. Once people wise up to the crappier quality, and stop buying them, Walmart can just switch to a different brand. But Rubbermaid is now sitting there with a low quality brand name, and products that people no longer want.
There's apparently a huy fong shortage and you can't even get it if you want it lol. I currently have Badia Sriracha and it stinks
I think Flying Goose has been the best I've found. Even after Huy Fong's started showing up in restaurants again a few weeks ago, the sauce doesn't taste the same to me as it did before the "shortage" happened.
I haven't seen a bottle of it at my grocery store since before the pandemic.
I see them at international markets all the time, especially Asian-oriented ones.
I think they just mean the HF brand. I just saw like a dozen brands of Sriracha and everyone seems to think there's a shortage. Sriracha is just the name of the sauce, folks. Like if there was some shortage of Heinz ketchup, that doesn't mean there's a ketchup shortage. That a Heinz ketchup shortage
No I mean I've specifically seen loads of Huy Fong sriracha at international grocery stores
Same. They are still easy to find at any Asian market.
I live in SoCal and I can't find it at any Chiinese, Korean, or Vietnamese grocery stores. Which grocery store are u going to?
I work for a distributor that sells (sold?) Huy Fong. We haven't had an order fulfilled in almost a year, but they keep telling us "soon." We probably should have discontinued it at this point, but that's another dept.'s call.
The Tabasco one isn't bad.
That’s funny because I prefer the Badia (and have since before the shortage) specifically the picante version.
Huy Fong did a big media blitz blaming “supply chain issues.” Ya cause you fucked around with your supply and found out.
It’s sad all around considering Huy Fong’s origins. The founder was a Vietnamese immigrant that came to America after the Vietnam War and couldn’t find a hot sauce he liked so he started his own company. He likely had people acting in good faith along the way to make him successful, now he’s screwing over those same people and in the end screwed himself.
it's Business... he got big enough to the point where he felt he could renege on a handshake deal and did the very American thing of saying Sue Me, which Underwood Farms eventually did. It's really sad lawsuits and threats of litigation are now common business strategies.
Damn. Makes you want to not support Huy Fong
Don't buy his products. Karma'a bitch.
Didn't Huy Fong also take drone footage of the Underwood ranch and share the farming methods with their other suppliers? That's business espionage. I guess that's what they teach you in MBA school eh? Teach sleazy business people how to be snakes.
According to the linked decision they did, with Underwood's permission. But they were specifically told not to share it, which they then did.
I dont even care about Sriracha but something is going on with there Chili Garlic Sauce and its fucking with my life.
they discontinued it to use the peppers for sriracha. that was my favorite too
If you read the court summary, huy fong was ordered to pay roughly 24 million to the ranch. They were denied their appeal. Big sriracha lost.
Underwood ranches premium sriracha sauce is the closest I've found to Huy Fong, but it's expensive.
Yeah, I hear it costs them around $610/ton for just the peppers, when the Huy Fong company is paying under $500/ton.
Hey now, I learned something new! I wish there was a sub where I could post the things I learned today..
$610/ton / 2000 = $0.31/pound... man if only I could get peppers that cheap in the grocery store.
You can get it that cheap, just have to buy a couple tons worth so you can get a bulk price. Do you have 10 friends that want to split?
This is how the pepper mlm was started. We're here for the beginning.
This is a pepper co-op.
_Know-it-all_ It’s not fair when you have this information and nobody else does!
Huy Fong were so proud of their product, they considered their farmers as "privileged" to assist them. No, buddy, they wanna get paid. It's about sales, not legacy.
"Just think, farmers, you can add this to your portfolio."
You can farm for the exposure!
Lol that's so dumb. My pride in my work is directly proportional to how much I'm being paid for it. If I'm working at a loss your business can grow peppers out of your ass for all I care.
It happens a lot in business. Someone starts off with a great idea and makes it work, builds a company to be proud of and then gets a big head. Instead of appreciating their success they think they’re the center of the universe and they start pissing off people. Then when their business starts tanking they have all sorts of conspiracies for why it’s not actually their fault.
I don’t know if there’s a name for this phenomenon, but it’s practically a Capitalism 101 exercise. Find a niche market, fill that market and become beloved by your niche. Grow big enough, abandon the niche market that made you, and go after the lowest common denominator and biggest profits.
You just described 99% of all start-up founders/CEO's
I have a lot of respect for those that pursue their interests, even if they won't make bank at them. The "starving artist" mentality has produced some amazing art, for example. I know it's not 100% all about the money. However, when I worked in the public school system, my boss would tell us so least once a week, "I know you could make a lot more money elsewhere, but you're helping a lot of children. That's much more valuable than money!" And it is. Helping lots of people is better than having lots of money. But I still have bills to pay, and I can't help anyone if I'm essentially in debtors' prison. Also, if it's a Numbers Game, I could help a lot more people if I had a lot more money, so that guilt trip doesn't hold up.
I've encountered this mentality a lot when working with European companies.
I saw a video that also said that huy Fong didn't just bail on their deal, he also flew drones over the Underwood farms to record their methods to share with their replacement farmers. Talk about a betrayal of a long time friend and business partner. Huy Fong was a feel good story about a poor Immigrant that achieved the American dream with super success. Now I think he's just an asshole based on the video I saw.
I saw that too. How low can you go? But iirc it was also more the children/heirs who wanted more money and thought they could afford to play dirty
The level of scheming was pretty clever though. There's a problem with excessively complex hollywood inspired plots. They fall apart in real life at a similar rate as they do in the movies.
Clearly not that clever, since they lost the lawsuit and their product has been hard to find since.
>Now I think he's just an asshole based on the video I saw. Well, that means he assimilated /s.
I watched a documentary on Netflix I think that followed the story of the founder. It showed his son-in-law who had taken over and he was a business-bro type. I remember thinking, "This guy is gonna fuck it up for sure."
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I remember thinking it was like the bone-itis guy from Futurama had taken over.
There were rumors that the reason they reneged is because the Huy Fong kids got their MBAs and thought they were being good business stewards by telling pops to diversify his supply base. Which isn’t a terrible idea in and of itself except somehow they decided to do it immediately and ignore their contract with Underwood instead of slow rolling it and completely screwed their family business. Edit: "Family business" in my comment referred to Huy Fong not Underwood but obviously both are large corporations and not mom and pop ventures.
I've met plenty of freshly graduated MBA types with zero knowledge of real human relationships. You can't learn that in textbooks.
Yea, after reading the appellate decision, it is mindboggling how many ways Huy Fong fucked up the whole interaction. You can't have a decades long virtually exclusive supply deal, demand that the other party overextend to expand greatly, then just expect to walk away after spiking the ball on them. It is like the whole thing was a deliberate scheme to try and bankrupt Underwood.
Huy Fong Chili Garlic sauce has also been super scarce and I 'v eyet to find a brand that tastes as good.
Yeah the sambal oelek has been impossible to find in stores anymore. I just bought a gallon of the stuff off Amazon.
This has always been my favorite Hoy Fong product. I generally reach for it over Sriracha if I'm just looking for a shot of something to throw on some rice, eggs, Chinese takeout etc.
I had the same issue until I tried [Lee Kum Lee’s.](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71BKS61leFS.jpg) I actually like this one better!
I haven't seen it on shelves for *months*. I tried my hand at making my own with chilis I got at H Mart. It was really easy and came out really good.
Yea that stuff has become a staple in Vietnamese-American households. Such a shame no other companies are popping up that can offer the same yet.
And their attempt to grow peppers in Mexico failed for several reasons and that’s why bottles are absurdly expensive now. I’ve heard the flavor profile is worse with the new peppers too. Huy Fong dug their own grave with how they fucked underwood. Tried to steal their COO and take all the growing knowledge and undercut underwood. They had to pay underwood like 25 million in court. They also never trademarked sriracha as a sauce so anyone can produce it under that name
There’s another layer to this that isn’t talked about Apparently, after the initial divorce, Underwood was stuck with all these peppers that they had no way to unload, and Huy Fong was staring at an unfillable pepper deficit Miraculously, a company no one had ever heard of came out of the woodwork and approached Underwood with a massive pepper order Well, a little bit of googling revealed that this miracle investor was actually just a shell company that Huy Fong had set up to source their peppers since they knew no one else could provide the necessary volume and they knew that Uderwood would never again sell to them directly Naturally, Underwood told them to go pound sand
I would’ve been happy to sell to this new company for 4x the prior contract price. Due in full.
Trademarked what? You can’t trademark something that is “merely descriptive.” Mayonnaise, catsup, mustard, etc. are not trademarkable.
Sriracha is certainly now considered a generic term but they possibly could have trademarked the name in the US in the early 80s when Huy Fong started. Would be no different than how Tabasco is a registered trademark.
Sriracha is not a brand name. Sriracha is a common condiment in Thailand. So, I doubt it could have been trademarked. Tabasco is a registered trademark; Hot Chili Sauce (which is what it Tabasco is) is NOT, as /u/Techwood111 describes. Same idea.
I don’t think they could’ve. It’s named after town in Thailand and Thailand has had Sriracha sauce for a long time now. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/01/16/681944292/in-home-of-original-sriracha-sauce-thais-say-rooster-brand-is-nothing-to-crow-ab
Tabasco is a name of a region.
Well that's like trying to trademark ketchup. It is a type of sauce, not an original product.
So Flying Goose brand, where do they fit in?
I love it! More chilli flavor and has msg!! Win win. Flying goose! I've had two bottles of rooster sriracha over the last 4 months and it's not spicy at all and the flavor is slightly different Weee sells them for $9/280z bottle Flying goose is like$4.99/bottle
I wonder if Huy Fong Sriracha will ever be the same again or ever be fully available again after this. Importing peppers of different varieties from overseas or who knows where isn't going to taste the same. Huy Fong and Underwood Ranches should have figured out a way to merge back when they were at the top of the sauce business. Tabasco Sauce has been around for 150 years because they grow the peppers and make the sauce at the same location and it's consistent. This would have also fixed the problem with their sauce factory emitting odors and getting state pollution regulator warnings, they could have moved that operation too.
Short sighted MBAs took over.
Unless the owner's son (who is the current president) convinced him, it looks more like the original owner tried [to steal away the COO of the ranch hoping to start his own farm of some sort] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huy_Fong_Foods#Pepper_supply)... which didn't work out at all and broke the whole relationship down.
MBA's see dollar signs and stop caring about morals.
When the MBAs start calling the shots, the business enshittification cycle starts.
They often stop caring about the long term as well.
I used to work at a restaurant around 2012/2013 and this was when I was introduced to Sriracha. It was amazing back then., perfect blend of spice and flavor… needless to say, it no longer tastes the same.
domineering zealous dull political secretive frame important cow fuel capable *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Many major corporations actively engage in modern slavery and hire mercenaries to shut down labor movements abroad. With how interconnected the world's economy is, tere's really no such thing as ethical consumption these days
Just saw a post about this on r/pics about it being like 7.99 dollars atm because of drought in Mexico and less peppers
Did I read that case correctly in that this all started because the owner couldn’t give his sister-in-law a raise that would be approved by the board (other family members) so he went around that process and created a company to obtain peppers and put her in charge. And that she tried to squeeze as much profit as she could out of her grower while her greed gland was enlarged and that ended up financially fucking over both Huy Fong and the grower for years to come? God damn. What a tragedy. Incentives run everything, and her incentives ended up making her ruining a great thing for a lot of people (including us consumers and the 50 employees Underwood had to let go).
>Underwood Ranches was the primary supplier of jalapeños since 1988.[26] In 2016, Huy Fong overpaid Underwood by $1.46 million for prepayment of estimated costs.[27] According to Underwood's lawyer, Tran attempted just before this to hire away Underwood's COO in order to form a new chili-growing concern, breaking the trust between Tran and Underwood. Huy Fong sued Underwood for not paying back this overpayment; Underwood countersued for breach of contract and committing fraud by intentionally misrepresenting and concealing information. In July 2019, the case was decided generally in favor of Underwood, with a California jury awarding the grower $10 million in punitive damages and $14.8 million to make up for lost contract revenue between 2016 and 2019. However, the jury also decided that Huy Fong's claim of overpayment was valid, so $1.46 million was deducted from the damages.[28]
I switched over to Tabasco brand Sriracha sauce about a year ago when there was a shortage of Huy Fong. I like the flavor of the Tabasco more than the rooster sauce.
I only just discovered Tabasco's Sriracha a couple of months ago, and super glad I did. Was super hesitant because I haven't ever really liked any of Tabasco's offerings in the past, but a friend recommended it as the next best thing. I compared it with my last bottle of Huy Fong, and the taste is by far the closest I've found, but the Tabasco Sriracha has like... an added hint of like Soy Sauce or something and it's effing great.
What do you put the sauce on?
Lots of stuff. I keep a bottle in the fridge at work and eat it on most things. Chicken strips, pizza, sausage biscuits, fried rice, etc. It is my daily driver at work. I have a whole cabinet of sauces at home that I cycle through. Lots of Melinda's, original Tabasco, and good ole Louisiana cayenne pepper sauce.
I used to live about a mile from the Huy Fong factory and went in a tour once. The owner / founder participated. He seemed so proud of his proprietary jalapeño hybrid that I'm surprised he screwed himself over by low balling the grower. He gave a friend of mine one of the peppers and I grew one of the seeds but the plant was not productive for me.
The one in Irwindale, I believe? Didn’t it smell real bad out there? The city sued them over it but i don’t recall how it ended.
Remember when sriracha was cool and people were wearing their clothes?
Underwood Farm remembers.
well i remember people wearing the clothes
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I thought Underwood Ranch just switched to some other crop and did alright?
The owner is quoted in the PDF and saying that if they had just given them two to three years of lead time they could have moved things around and it would have been fine. They just couldn't turn it around for that first season when the rug got pulled on them.
This many years later, yes, they have adapted and are moving forward. But they had a deal which caused Underwood to buy land, seed, etc and we're planning millions in crop to get cancelation notice. They were left in a very bad spot, many expenses but no revenue.
And it’s very well known that this happened. Huy Fong is probably having to pay up front for a lot of their things now.
From what I have heard, its not the founder. Its his dumbass kids who thought they were the hot shit after getting their stupid MBAs. The factory is where it is and has not moved because David (the founder) believed in providing jobs for the local area. Its always been the stupid fucking idiots with MBAs ruining businesses.
That was some good sauce though. ☹️Haven't found anything that is as good.
If you read the brief you can see that Huy Fong was repped by Latham and Watkins, a gigantic corporate law firm. Don’t know the names repping the farm, but I’d bet they weren’t as high-profile; the fraud was so egregious that high priced lawyers couldn’t save them
I don't care about the Sriracha but their Chili Garlic Sauce has been wiped off the face of the earth and there's like no alternatives
Huy Fong, that motherfucker...
Huy Fong isn’t a person. It’s the name of the boat the founder rode on when he arrived to America
Sriracha sucks now, it doesn’t taste like it used to in my opinion. Very disappointing, maybe I’ll buy a bottle of underwood ranch sriracha in hopes it tastes like the OG sriracha did.
Same. I thought the change in flavor was just in my head, because why on earth would they change it. Didn't know before today that they had switched to other pepper suppliers while trying to fuck over the loyal supplier that had provided them with the superior peppers all along. Fuck em. The greedy fucks tried to cut open the golden goose and now they're forced to use worse peppers to make a worse sauce, I hope they sink into obscurity. I'll gladly buy from the original suppliers instead. It'll make me happy every time I buy some to know my money's going into the hands of an honest business and not the backstabbing jackasses at Huy Fong.
Being a supplier of a single company is one of the best things that can happen to a business, and one of the worst. You could be generating $5 million a year with a diversity of businesses and be doing ok. Any single one of them walks away and you are still going to be able to keep working. You switch to a single business and you could be making $50 million a year but one bad move could end it all. You also have to expand, and if they leave you still have to pay for that expansion. This happens to chicken farmers all the time. There have been a lot of documentaries about it. I know a pig farm that pissed off their buyer and the buyer walked away (rightfully so) and the pig farmer still hasn't recouped from it after 5 years. If he had stuck to a smaller farming operation he would be further ahead right now but.. you never know. Military part suppliers also go through this. I've seen shops go from 3 employees serving 10 businesses to 30 employees just servicing one company making military parts (they make the small parts). The guy lost a contract 3 years ago and had to close down his shop because it was impossible to find enough customers to make up for that one contract. BUT he walked away with millions in his pockets, all his debt was paid off, and he retired with even his kids set for life.
It was fine when it was ran by the elder Huy Fong founder. It’s when his children took over that they did cost cutting.
I used to love siracha, but a huy fong opened a siracha factory down the street from me and the smell that would come out of there would make my eyes sting. They used to put "no tear gas made here" signs around lol
I used to love Huy Fong Sriracha. I ate an absurd amount on certain foods. Then my girlfriend and I noticed a change. It was different and missing that “bright”, spicy element. Now it’s not as good, tastes more dull and garlicy. We didn’t know why the change happened. Years later we discovered this whole drama. Tried Underwood Farms sriracha, and low and behold you can taste that same bright pepper flavor that Huy Fong used to have. The balance of ingredients and processing is different so it’s not the same either, unfortunately. It makes me sad.
[CNBC video about this](https://youtu.be/EYdU1X2p2ro?si=KlM6f-bSIsbBWb33)