October 28, 2025 • 11 mins
This blockbuster style of hot sauce started with the Huy Fong brand, but that original 'rooster sauce' is often out of stock. Learn how a combo of weather and legal drama are at the root in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://recipes.howstuffworks.com/food-facts/sriracha.htm
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff,
Lauren vogelbam here. Hot sauce is a fascinating phenomenon. Chili,
peppers and other naturally spicy fruits evolved the capacity to
produce those pungent compounds to prevent bacteria, fungi, and mammals
(00:22):
from eating them and thus from destroying their precious species
continuing seeds. That's right. Chemical spiciness, as far as scientists
are aware, is a defense mechanism in mammals. It triggers
the same nerves that sense actual physical burn level heat
and thus warns most mammals to stay away. But many
(00:45):
humans have decided that we enjoy that sense of danger
a lot. The global market for these sauces is worth
billions of dollars a year. Within that industry, there are,
of course, some darlings, particular brands or styles that have
captured our attention today. Let's talk about siracha. When I
(01:06):
say siracha in the context of hot sauce, you probably
think about the thick, bright, red, spicy, savory, tangy sweet
sauce in a big squeeze bottle with a green cap
and a rooster on the label that came into popularity
in the early two thousands. This sauce is a product
of the American brand Hoifang Foods, which got its start
in nineteen eighty by a Chinese Vietnamese refugee, one David Tran.
(01:31):
The name comes from a town in Thailand called Seracha
on the northeast Gulf coast. There, starting back in the
nineteen thirties, a local family began bottling the hot sauce
that would become the brand Saracha Pinat. It was the
first hot sauce labeled Siracha, and it's still available today.
It's a bit thinner and more saucy than the aforementioned
(01:52):
rooster sauce, but it's made up of the same things sugar, salt, vinegar,
pickled garlic, and ripe bread chilies with the fruity spicy flavor,
and this seems to have been trans inspiration. A. Tran
was among the millions of refugees who fled when North
and South Vietnam unified under a communist government in nineteen
(02:13):
seventy six. He arrived in America on a Taiwanese freighter
called the Hifong or Gathering Prosperity and named his company
Hoifang Foods in honor of the vessel. Just a few
decades later, his style of saracha was Bonapetite magazine's Ingredient
of the Year for twenty ten. Fans lawed its flavors
for improving everything from fu and spring rolls to eggs
(02:36):
and bacon to tacos and pizza. There was a saracha
festival in Los Angeles by twenty thirteen. Hoifang alone was
selling some twenty million bottles a year by twenty sixteen,
all without ever spending a cent on advertising. But today
the brand is struggling to continue production, due in part
to a multimillion dollar falling out with its pepper farmers.
(03:00):
This is not a simple story about a tasty sauce,
but a tale of saucy business drama. But let's back
up a little. The story goes that when David Tran
arrived in the US, he found the American hot sauce
scene lacking in Southeast Asian pizaz so he set out
to create his own a, starting in a five thousand
(03:20):
square foot building in Boston's Chinatown and delivering his sauces
to local restaurants out of the back of a Chevy van.
Seven years later, as sales and profits boomed, Tran moved
the production to a sixty eight thousand square foot facility
outside of Los Angeles, California, and started developing his own
equipment for producing the bottles and the sauce. He also
(03:42):
partnered up with Underwood Ranches, a California family owned farm
run by fourth generation farmer Craig Underwood. Tran needed perfectly
ripe Plopenia peppers, and Underwood was glad to provide as
many of them as possible. For a long time, the
two companies prospered together. Hoifong moved down the street to
a former Whammo toy factory with double the space in
(04:04):
nineteen ninety six, and then again to a spot a
bit further out in Erwindale in twenty ten with almost
ten times the space. That facility can produce three thousand
bottles of seracha in an hour. All of this required
a lot of peppers, according to court paperwork, When Tran
was getting ready to move to Erwindale, he approached Underwood
(04:25):
with the deal, saying, essentially, I need more peppers and
I'd like to buy them from you, So if you
expand your acreage, I'll pay you by the acre grown
instead of buy the weight produced. So don't worry about
putting all your peppers in one basket. Even if you
have a lousy crop one year, I'll pay you the
same for it. Underwood took the deal, and over the
(04:48):
next decade they went from making about a quarter of
their revenue selling peppers to Hoifong to making about eighty
percent of their revenue there. With trans encouragement, they bought
and leased a bunch more Land pepper growing and developed
a new mechanical harvester to help pick them more efficiently.
Tran refused to raise the sauce's wholesale price and refused
(05:09):
several lucrative offers to buy the company, intending to keep
it in the family. The businesses even survived a bit
of a sarahapanic in twenty thirteen, when residents of Irwindale
complained about tear gas esque fumes and a court ordered
production to shut down. Ten other cities offered to host
the factory, but all of Hoifong's employees and peppers and
(05:32):
Heart were local, so they worked out a way to
stay by upgrading the filtration in their ventilation system, minor
bumps aside. It seemed like a veritable hot sauce heaven.
But in twenty sixteen, it all fell apart. Up through
the first week of November that year, everything seemed normal.
(05:52):
Underwood and Tran met to talk about their plan for
the twenty seventeen season. Underwood outlined his preparations already underway,
and Tran agreed to pay him millions of dollars in
advance for a planned seventeen hundred acres of peppers. A
week later, the floor fell out. According to those court documents,
Tran suddenly insisted that Underwood sell him peppers by the
(06:15):
ton instead of by the acre, and at five hundred
bucks a ton, which I understand is a low ball. Further,
Tran said that Underwood needed to sell to this new
company had started specifically for sourcing peppers called Chili Coo,
and that Chiliico didn't have the liquidity to send any
advance payments, so Underwood was going to have to figure
(06:36):
out funding on his own. Meanwhile, in the middle of
all of this, Tran was secretly trying to hire Underwood
Ranch's Coo out from under them. The manning question Jim
Roberts has hands on experience running large scale harvesting operations,
and Tran wanted him to come work for Chili Coo.
No matter who they bought their peppers from. Roberts turned
(06:59):
to down and Underwood turned down the proposed changes to
their contract, thus bringing the partnership to a screeching halt.
It was a financial disaster for Underwood. They had empty
farmland they couldn't get out of their leases. This contract
ending cut again eighty percent of their revenue. They had
to lay off some forty employees, about half of their staff.
(07:22):
Hoifong was fine for the moment. They contracted with other
farms and showed them confidential video from Underwood of how
their new mechanical harvester worked. This might have been the
end of the drama, but it seems Hoifong was dissatisfied
with the outcome of everything. They sued Underwood for one
point five million dollars, an amount they claimed they had
(07:44):
overpaid for twenty sixteen's pepper crop. Underwood countersued for breach
of contract and intentional contract fraud. A couple years later,
jury acknowledged both the overpayment and the damages. They said
Hoifong owed Underwood thirteen million in actual damages and an
extra ten million in punitive damages, but that Underwood had
(08:06):
to refund them that one point five million. But the
mess did not end there, because Hoifong appealed the decision.
By then, this was twenty nineteen, Underwood had already spent
a couple of years in the red, and they were
looking at another couple of years in the appeals process
before potentially seeing any settlement money. They wound up accepting
(08:29):
what's called a litigation finance deal from an investment firm.
A litigation finance or funding is basically an investment firm
betting on the outcome of a court case. In this case,
a firm floated Underwood four million bucks that they wouldn't
have to pay back if they eventually lost the case,
but that they'd have to pay back double if they won.
(08:50):
The courts eventually decided to uphold the original decision and
Hoifong had to pay Underwood out. In summer of twenty
twenty one, this all came to be public knowledge basically
because Leslie stalled that a segment on Sixty Minutes about
it in twenty twenty two. A focusing on the litigation
funding aspect. In a nutshell, litigation funding can be cool
(09:13):
because it can help small businesses that can't afford to
go through with court cases, but it's also a multi
billion dollar business that has very little oversight, and some
experts worry that it's predatory or even changing the way
that the law works. Anyway, that segment brought what was
otherwise a niche local agrobusiness story to light, and here
(09:34):
we are. It seems like what happened is that Tran
and or his family and their companies were kind of
banking on being able to source cheaper peppers on the
open market instead of contracting with one farm, and it
might have worked except for a couple of factors. First,
the weather has not been cooperating. Farming is an uncertain
(09:55):
venture that depends partially on weather conditions, and conditions in
southwest North Amyria have been weird these past few years
due to climate change. Think of the droughts, fires, and
flooding that you've seen on the news. Climatologists are calling
this a mega drought, the driest twenty years in the
last thousand years or more. Because of this, demand for
(10:18):
peppers in general is outpacing supply, and so without dedicated
growers working with him, Tran hasn't been able to source
enough peppers to produce enough sauce to keep up with
the demand for it. That's why there have been Hoifunk's
Saratcha shortages on and off since twenty twenty. That and
this is just conjecture, but maybe other local farmers are
(10:39):
a little wary of contracting with them. The climate factor
here is troubling and good reason among many others to
pay attention to what environmental scientists are telling us about
what we need to do to mitigate climate harm. But
for now, for anyone looking for a more dependable saracha fix,
there are, of course lots of other brands and hot
(11:01):
sauce styles out there, including some now made by Underwood Ranches,
which are available on their website with the tagline the
peppers make the Sauce. Today's episode is based on the
article why Sarracha is Everybody's Favorite hot Sauce on HowStuffWorks
dot Com, written by Mark Mancini. Brain Stuff is production
(11:24):
of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com, and
its produced by Tyler Klang. For more podcasts, from my
heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff,
Lauren vogelbam here. Hot sauce is a fascinating phenomenon. Chili,
peppers and other naturally spicy fruits evolved the capacity to
produce those pungent compounds to prevent bacteria, fungi, and mammals
(00:22):
from eating them and thus from destroying their precious species
continuing seeds. That's right. Chemical spiciness, as far as scientists
are aware, is a defense mechanism in mammals. It triggers
the same nerves that sense actual physical burn level heat
and thus warns most mammals to stay away. But many
(00:45):
humans have decided that we enjoy that sense of danger
a lot. The global market for these sauces is worth
billions of dollars a year. Within that industry, there are,
of course, some darlings, particular brands or styles that have
captured our attention today. Let's talk about siracha. When I
(01:06):
say siracha in the context of hot sauce, you probably
think about the thick, bright, red, spicy, savory, tangy sweet
sauce in a big squeeze bottle with a green cap
and a rooster on the label that came into popularity
in the early two thousands. This sauce is a product
of the American brand Hoifang Foods, which got its start
in nineteen eighty by a Chinese Vietnamese refugee, one David Tran.
(01:31):
The name comes from a town in Thailand called Seracha
on the northeast Gulf coast. There, starting back in the
nineteen thirties, a local family began bottling the hot sauce
that would become the brand Saracha Pinat. It was the
first hot sauce labeled Siracha, and it's still available today.
It's a bit thinner and more saucy than the aforementioned
(01:52):
rooster sauce, but it's made up of the same things sugar, salt, vinegar,
pickled garlic, and ripe bread chilies with the fruity spicy flavor,
and this seems to have been trans inspiration. A. Tran
was among the millions of refugees who fled when North
and South Vietnam unified under a communist government in nineteen
(02:13):
seventy six. He arrived in America on a Taiwanese freighter
called the Hifong or Gathering Prosperity and named his company
Hoifang Foods in honor of the vessel. Just a few
decades later, his style of saracha was Bonapetite magazine's Ingredient
of the Year for twenty ten. Fans lawed its flavors
for improving everything from fu and spring rolls to eggs
(02:36):
and bacon to tacos and pizza. There was a saracha
festival in Los Angeles by twenty thirteen. Hoifang alone was
selling some twenty million bottles a year by twenty sixteen,
all without ever spending a cent on advertising. But today
the brand is struggling to continue production, due in part
to a multimillion dollar falling out with its pepper farmers.
(03:00):
This is not a simple story about a tasty sauce,
but a tale of saucy business drama. But let's back
up a little. The story goes that when David Tran
arrived in the US, he found the American hot sauce
scene lacking in Southeast Asian pizaz so he set out
to create his own a, starting in a five thousand
(03:20):
square foot building in Boston's Chinatown and delivering his sauces
to local restaurants out of the back of a Chevy van.
Seven years later, as sales and profits boomed, Tran moved
the production to a sixty eight thousand square foot facility
outside of Los Angeles, California, and started developing his own
equipment for producing the bottles and the sauce. He also
(03:42):
partnered up with Underwood Ranches, a California family owned farm
run by fourth generation farmer Craig Underwood. Tran needed perfectly
ripe Plopenia peppers, and Underwood was glad to provide as
many of them as possible. For a long time, the
two companies prospered together. Hoifong moved down the street to
a former Whammo toy factory with double the space in
(04:04):
nineteen ninety six, and then again to a spot a
bit further out in Erwindale in twenty ten with almost
ten times the space. That facility can produce three thousand
bottles of seracha in an hour. All of this required
a lot of peppers, according to court paperwork, When Tran
was getting ready to move to Erwindale, he approached Underwood
(04:25):
with the deal, saying, essentially, I need more peppers and
I'd like to buy them from you, So if you
expand your acreage, I'll pay you by the acre grown
instead of buy the weight produced. So don't worry about
putting all your peppers in one basket. Even if you
have a lousy crop one year, I'll pay you the
same for it. Underwood took the deal, and over the
(04:48):
next decade they went from making about a quarter of
their revenue selling peppers to Hoifong to making about eighty
percent of their revenue there. With trans encouragement, they bought
and leased a bunch more Land pepper growing and developed
a new mechanical harvester to help pick them more efficiently.
Tran refused to raise the sauce's wholesale price and refused
(05:09):
several lucrative offers to buy the company, intending to keep
it in the family. The businesses even survived a bit
of a sarahapanic in twenty thirteen, when residents of Irwindale
complained about tear gas esque fumes and a court ordered
production to shut down. Ten other cities offered to host
the factory, but all of Hoifong's employees and peppers and
(05:32):
Heart were local, so they worked out a way to
stay by upgrading the filtration in their ventilation system, minor
bumps aside. It seemed like a veritable hot sauce heaven.
But in twenty sixteen, it all fell apart. Up through
the first week of November that year, everything seemed normal.
(05:52):
Underwood and Tran met to talk about their plan for
the twenty seventeen season. Underwood outlined his preparations already underway,
and Tran agreed to pay him millions of dollars in
advance for a planned seventeen hundred acres of peppers. A
week later, the floor fell out. According to those court documents,
Tran suddenly insisted that Underwood sell him peppers by the
(06:15):
ton instead of by the acre, and at five hundred
bucks a ton, which I understand is a low ball. Further,
Tran said that Underwood needed to sell to this new
company had started specifically for sourcing peppers called Chili Coo,
and that Chiliico didn't have the liquidity to send any
advance payments, so Underwood was going to have to figure
(06:36):
out funding on his own. Meanwhile, in the middle of
all of this, Tran was secretly trying to hire Underwood
Ranch's Coo out from under them. The manning question Jim
Roberts has hands on experience running large scale harvesting operations,
and Tran wanted him to come work for Chili Coo.
No matter who they bought their peppers from. Roberts turned
(06:59):
to down and Underwood turned down the proposed changes to
their contract, thus bringing the partnership to a screeching halt.
It was a financial disaster for Underwood. They had empty
farmland they couldn't get out of their leases. This contract
ending cut again eighty percent of their revenue. They had
to lay off some forty employees, about half of their staff.
(07:22):
Hoifong was fine for the moment. They contracted with other
farms and showed them confidential video from Underwood of how
their new mechanical harvester worked. This might have been the
end of the drama, but it seems Hoifong was dissatisfied
with the outcome of everything. They sued Underwood for one
point five million dollars, an amount they claimed they had
(07:44):
overpaid for twenty sixteen's pepper crop. Underwood countersued for breach
of contract and intentional contract fraud. A couple years later,
jury acknowledged both the overpayment and the damages. They said
Hoifong owed Underwood thirteen million in actual damages and an
extra ten million in punitive damages, but that Underwood had
(08:06):
to refund them that one point five million. But the
mess did not end there, because Hoifong appealed the decision.
By then, this was twenty nineteen, Underwood had already spent
a couple of years in the red, and they were
looking at another couple of years in the appeals process
before potentially seeing any settlement money. They wound up accepting
(08:29):
what's called a litigation finance deal from an investment firm.
A litigation finance or funding is basically an investment firm
betting on the outcome of a court case. In this case,
a firm floated Underwood four million bucks that they wouldn't
have to pay back if they eventually lost the case,
but that they'd have to pay back double if they won.
(08:50):
The courts eventually decided to uphold the original decision and
Hoifong had to pay Underwood out. In summer of twenty
twenty one, this all came to be public knowledge basically
because Leslie stalled that a segment on Sixty Minutes about
it in twenty twenty two. A focusing on the litigation
funding aspect. In a nutshell, litigation funding can be cool
(09:13):
because it can help small businesses that can't afford to
go through with court cases, but it's also a multi
billion dollar business that has very little oversight, and some
experts worry that it's predatory or even changing the way
that the law works. Anyway, that segment brought what was
otherwise a niche local agrobusiness story to light, and here
(09:34):
we are. It seems like what happened is that Tran
and or his family and their companies were kind of
banking on being able to source cheaper peppers on the
open market instead of contracting with one farm, and it
might have worked except for a couple of factors. First,
the weather has not been cooperating. Farming is an uncertain
(09:55):
venture that depends partially on weather conditions, and conditions in
southwest North Amyria have been weird these past few years
due to climate change. Think of the droughts, fires, and
flooding that you've seen on the news. Climatologists are calling
this a mega drought, the driest twenty years in the
last thousand years or more. Because of this, demand for
(10:18):
peppers in general is outpacing supply, and so without dedicated
growers working with him, Tran hasn't been able to source
enough peppers to produce enough sauce to keep up with
the demand for it. That's why there have been Hoifunk's
Saratcha shortages on and off since twenty twenty. That and
this is just conjecture, but maybe other local farmers are
(10:39):
a little wary of contracting with them. The climate factor
here is troubling and good reason among many others to
pay attention to what environmental scientists are telling us about
what we need to do to mitigate climate harm. But
for now, for anyone looking for a more dependable saracha fix,
there are, of course lots of other brands and hot
(11:01):
sauce styles out there, including some now made by Underwood Ranches,
which are available on their website with the tagline the
peppers make the Sauce. Today's episode is based on the
article why Sarracha is Everybody's Favorite hot Sauce on HowStuffWorks
dot Com, written by Mark Mancini. Brain Stuff is production
(11:24):
of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com, and
its produced by Tyler Klang. For more podcasts, from my
heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
BrainStuff News
Host
Lauren Vogelbaum
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