December 20, 2023 • 42 mins
This Thai-style condiment, popularized in the U.S. by a Vietnamese immigrant, inspires fan loyalty and frustrations alike. Anney and Lauren explore where sriracha comes from, its meteoric pop-culture rise, and the science of why hot sauce burns so good. Plus, an update: Corporate drama and comeuppance!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to Saber Productive. iHeartRadio. I'm Annie Reese
and I'm.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Lauren vogel Bum and today we have a classic episode
and an update for you about si Rachia.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Oh yes, because a lot, as I'm sure a lot
of you have probably heard, has going on in the
world of Siracha. Oh okay, well right, So so this
episode originally aired in April of twenty eighteen, so our timeline,
you know, cuts off there. And I was not aware
that there was drama.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Oh I was because.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Because it suddenly became impossible to find Siracha. Right, you
could find it on eBay for like one hundred plus dollars. Sure,
and so I was you know, I had.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
Being you you looked into it, sure.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
And I learned a lot.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Well, okay, so we're gonna it's it's a super fun episode.
So we're let's go ahead and run the episode and
then afterwards we'll do some updates.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Yeah, yes, okay, here we go.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Hello, and welcome to food Stuff. I'm Annie Resa and
I'm Lauren vocal Bam.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
And all of your intro lines are so good. And
then I always wind up being the one who's who's
tasked with delivering though.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Yeah, because you're so good at delivering intro lines.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Oh well, thank you.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
This is food Stuff's hottest episode to date.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, it is, see because we're talking about sarracha siracha.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Can you remember the first time you had siracha?
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Oh goodness? Can I No? I cannot. I think the
first time that I realized that it was becoming very
common was maybe about oh, I want to say.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
Six years ago, right around then.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Yeah. Maybe wait, maybe eight?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Oh good.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
I feel like it's been a while a while.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Maybe it was more like ten. Maybe I have no idea.
You have no clue what dates are made of. Yeah.
But when I started seeing it in like in like.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Pubs, oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Like otherwise American or English style pubs, I was just like, oh,
this is this is here now real real, yeah, big time.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
How about you. I think I tried it.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
I tried it pretty recently, and I remember I think
it was our very own Tracy V. Wilson, who she
was talking about how most of her food she saw
as like a conveyance to get saracha to her mouth
or something, and I was like, well, I've got to
try this, and I very overly ambitiously. I just put
(03:03):
way too much. It was good, but it's it's spicy, spicy.
Yeah yeah, and I like tears were coming out, nose
was running, and I remember being sad that this was
my first experience, but knowing it was good and I
should return.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Yeah, right again, that was my first sushi with Sabby experience.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Oh yeah, but.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Another story, another episode, Yes, that was Sabby episode.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
Yeah, so s racha, what is it for me?
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Always spicier than I think every single time, but I do. Yeah,
I love this stuff. It's called rooster sauce pretty commonly
because of the rooster logo based on Hoifong's brand siracha
based on inventors the inventor's zodiac sign. Yeah, I thought
that was an interesting fact or. It's also sometimes called
(03:55):
hipster ketchup.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
It's a condiment or of sauce eate up of red pepper, vinegar, garlic, sugar, and.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Salt, plus maybe a couple extra preservatives to prevent microbial
growth and to keep it bright red.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Right, And it is spicy, about one thousand to two thousand,
five hundred units on the Scoville scale.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Tangy, a little sweet.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
The Scovale scale if you haven't heard of it, or
if you are not sure how it works. Ranks, how
like spicy hot things are based on the sensitivity of
human taste buds. If you take a spicy thing and
dilute it with water, eventually you will get to the
point where the human tongue cannot detect the heat Anymore's
(04:39):
ranking of one thousand to two thousand, five hundred Scoville
heat units means that you would have to dilute it
by that many times in order to make the heat undetectable.
So like, if you have an ounce of sperachia, you'd
have to add anywhere from one thousand to two thousand,
five hundred ounces of water before you wouldn't be able
to feel the heat at all anymore.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
That's quite a lot of water, I know.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Also fun facts about the Scoville scale. This is determined
these days through much more precise, high performance liquid chromatography
instead of like physical taste testers as it was back
in the nineteen teens when it was invented. I do
not envy those people. I like spice a lot, but
whoof Yeah, Also, the scale does have a bottom. I
think think of something like bell peppers or pimento perhaps,
(05:22):
but it does not have a top Carolina Reapers are
among the world's hottest known peppers and have been ranked
at over two million shus oh Man.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
I think there's a video of Joe McCormick, one of
our coworkers, trying at Carolina reaper, just straight up eating
it and it kind of went all wrong, and you
feel bad for him, but it's also funny. Well, it
went wrong in the sense that it's incredibly spicy. You
can tell just by watching, Oh said it felt like
I think getting stung by thousands of bees.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
Oh yeah, oh well, now I remember that video.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Yeah, but it is mother in law was trying to
be helpful and it was like, I'll get you some milk,
and she gave him some milk and he took a
sip and it was expired, like really expired, really bad expired.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
And then we tried that chip.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Yeah. Over on the Facebook live show Snack Stuff that
Ben Ball and and I do, our producer Ramsey had
gotten us one of these Grim Reaper Carolina chip. It's
a single chip. It comes into single coffee shaped package. Yeah,
and we had we shared like a fraction of it.
And then after the show was over and he atee
a fraction of it too, And I responded much more
(06:37):
strongly than she did.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
It was quite spicy.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
It was quite spicy.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
Your poker face is great.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
I learned from Lady Gaga. The biggest brand of saracha
sauce is the aforementioned Hoy Funk Foods in the United States,
and that's the classic bottle you see with the.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
Green with the green cap and the green rooster logo.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Yes. Yeah, it's owned by David Tran of Vietnamese immigrant
The name Suracha itself comes from hot sauces from Si Racha,
a town in Thailand, and those chilies are key, not
just for obvious reasons, but also because they are made.
Siracha is made with fresh chilies, not dried chili. Yeah,
and this has presented some obstacles. According to Tran quote,
(07:20):
we can only grow as quickly as our ability to
harvest chilies grows. In twenty sixteen, that came out to
one hundred million pounds around forty five million kilos of
fresh chilies. That has to last an entire year, which, well,
due to our love of this stuff, is not necessarily
(07:41):
a given. And I will touch on this later, but
that's one of the reasons why you don't see ads
for siracha.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Oh huh.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
They're like, well, we basically sell everything that we make already.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
So yeah, we're doing what we can. Let's look at
some numbers. If we take hot sauce as a whole,
the industry is in the top ten of America's fastest
growing and globally, sales exceed one billion dollars. What yeah
HOI fun food Sacha sold twenty million bottles in twenty sixteen,
(08:16):
coming out to around sixteen million dollars in At twenty thirteen,
Los Angeles hosted the first La Seracha Festival. I hear
tail there's a whole serracha manu at Taco Bell but
it is or was, I'm not sure if it's still around,
made in house, not the Hoifung brand.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
If any of you listeners know about that.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Right and let us know.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Yeah. One of the reasons it's so popular is because
it is so versatile. It's good straight but also good
for mixing with other sauces or condiments like mayo. Oh yeah,
you can add it to soups like fu use it
as a marinade in cocktails. It was Bonapetite's ingredient of
the Year and twenty ten.
Speaker 4 (08:57):
I had a siracha milkshake one time.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
What. Yeah, Yeah, I can't say that I enjoyed the
experience of it.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Was it like ice cream?
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Yeah? And like peanuts, like peanut sauce.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
This is blowing my mind.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Is this local local plays?
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Yeah? It was at Pallukaville. Oh.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Yes, they have many an interesting milkshake over there.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yeah, this one might have been too interesting.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Too too much perhaps, However, it shows that uh siracha
can be used in many, many ways and it has
been absolutely Yes. A lot of copycats are trying to
get in on this game, and the lawyer behind Saracha's
creator reports this means an annual four to five infringement complaints.
Like people, I've seen pictures. The bottle is very similar designed.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Right, because they they don't actually have it copyrighted. That
anyone can make a sauce call it siracha.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Sure, but you the logo, the look precisely is what
is getting these copycats in trouble and tran. The guy
behind Serracha is a very interesting fellow.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Despite being at.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
The helm of an extremely lucrative brand, the success of
which has led to a cult like following merchandise and
a documentary. He isn't interested in being filthy rich, or
that's not his main goal anyway. He claims to never
have raised Seracha's wholesale price, never mind inflation. He says
he's not entirely sure who the distributors are, just that
(10:25):
he has been using the same ten for over ten years,
and that he's only certain that it's sold in the US, Canada,
and Europe, but he speculates it sold.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
In other places. He doesn't know for sure.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
I would speculate that too, though, I think that's probably
a very good guess. Yes, Sir Racha's never been officially advertised.
Like I mentioned, He's refuted several offers to buy the
company and intends to keep it in the family his
son and daughter of the president and vice president, respectively.
And he once said, rather than being a billionaire, he
(10:57):
simply wanted to make a fresh chili sauce so that
everyone who wants hoy fun can have it.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Nothing more. Huh, Yeah, that is not your typical CEO, no.
I think.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
He also said he's going to keep making it until
no one wants it anymore and then they'll stop.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Wow, I think that's a long way off based on
some of yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
The coming details.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Yes, I would say, probably going to be making it
for a lot longer. So let's look at some of
those details that led to sacha becoming this huge behemoth
of a condiment.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Right, But first let's take a quick break for a
word from our sponsor, and we're back.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
The history of saracha goes all the way back to
nine thousand BCE, when someone was looking to add a
kick to their omelet.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
No, just kidding. It actually all started with Thomas Jefferson
in France. What now, buddy, fake out.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
The consensus is that the first person to make siacha
was a Thai woman named Tannam Chukapuk over eighty years previous.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
At first, she.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Made the stuff mostly for her friends and family, but
eventually she made it available for purchase under the name
Siraha Pant. This version is a bit thinner and tangier
than what most of us are probably used to. You
can still find it in some specialty stores and I
believe on Amazon Prime if you are interested. If we
look at David Tran and Hoi Fun Foods Suracha specifically,
(12:43):
Tran had been working with Chili in Vietnam since nineteen
seventy five. His first hot sauce, pepper Sate, came in
baby food jars and he mostly reserved them also for
his family members, and I think Can delivered them on
a bike.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
In nineteen seventy nine, escaping from increasing persecution of Chinese
people by the new Communist government in Vietnam, he took
a freighter by the name of Hoi Fung to the
United States, and later the name of the freighter would
be the inspiration for the name of his company, Huh Yeah.
Chan arrived to the US as a refugee. He found
(13:22):
the American hot sauce scene lacking, so he set out
to come up with his own recipe. He set up
shop in Chinatown near a, Los Angeles in a five
thousand square foot building in nineteen eighty. Along with this
pepper sate sauce, he started selling a chili, garlic sauce,
sambule olik and of course suracha.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Various kinds of sembole are my other favorite thing on
the planet. I add them to all the stuff I'm
not entirely sure what those are. To be honest, I
saw them on the website and I'm very interested to
try them. I've got like three different kinds in my
house right now. All, okay, we work this out.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Yes, awesome.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
It's like a thicker, chunkier kind of chili.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Sauce, kind of like maybe salsa meets chili sauce.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Like salsa meets sirechia.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Yeah oo, yep, I'm on board.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
At first, transold his creations out of the back of
a van, a blue Chevy van, according to the Hoifan website. Yep,
he delivered directly to Asian restaurants. As sales and profits
increased at an unforeseen rate. Over seven years, Chan moved
to a much larger sixty eight thousand square foot facility
(14:36):
in Rosemead, California, started developing his own custom equipment, and the.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Company was born. Yes.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
By nineteen ninety six, sixty eight thousand square feet was
not enough to satisfy surata demand, and Hoifung moved two
doors down to the old Whammo building, upgrading to one
hundred and seventy thousand square feet. If you don't know
what Whammo was, it was a place that sold frisbee
slipping sides hula.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Hoops from what is it?
Speaker 2 (15:05):
From Whammo? I don't know. There was this like perky
lady voice or child voice that was always at the
end of the.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Commercials Man, I was so good at hula hooping and this.
I'd forgotten about slipping sides until we did this, And
now I'm like nostalgic for that.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
The slipping side time of my life.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
I always injured myself. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
They were painful, like there's no cushioning right, you launched
yourself and you're just pretty much.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
In belly flopping onto hard soil.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
But still I missed them. Nonetheless, nostage is funny that way.
Trans said of this in the documentary about Saracha. Before
that building was filled full with hula hoops, now filled with.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Chili I love. But even that wasn't enough.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Trans relocated operations to a six hundred and fifty thousand
square foot facility in Erwindale, California, in twenty ten, though
it wasn't up and running until a few years later.
The facility could produce three thousand bottles of seracha per hour.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Huh yeah, And this brings up.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
The Great Saracha Panic of twenty thirteen.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
All it was very serious.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
I actually do remember this one.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Yeah, yeah, it seems and not. Everyone in erwin Dale
was thrilled with the new siracha factory and specifically the smell.
A Los Angeles Superior Court ordered the factory to shut down,
to which Tran hung up a sign that read, in
all caps.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
No cheer gas made here.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Yeah, Seracha had to pause operations. Hence, Panic ten cities
contacted Tran offering to host the factory. However, moving would
not be so easy. All of the fresh chilis and
chili farmers were in California and he didn't want to
have to lose all of his employ The solution came
in the form of an upgraded filter for the ventilation system,
(17:05):
and the lawsuit was dropped in twenty fourteen. That same year,
Tran open the doors to his factory to the public
for the first time, in his words, to prove they
don't make tear gas inside. It sounds like a very
Willy Wonka esque tour too.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
I really want to go.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Yeah, apparently there's there's weird like memorabilia rooms. They have
fire hydrants that are specially branded with the serrachia loco.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
In Atlanta.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
I remember this happening because one of my favorite local
food trucks, Yumbee, they have it Caeso siacha sauce, and
as you can guess, it's very popular. And when the
serracha panic happened, the customer fan base freaked out that
their sauce habits would be impacted, and Yumbee brought out
all the saracha they could find to make sure that
(17:56):
they would not run out.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
People are very serious about this.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
They are well and there. Yes, their case of siracha
is really tasty, so I understand it is it is.
As of twenty sixteen, Haifung's siracha finally started being distributed
in his home country of Vietnam.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
Oh, where it is popular.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Although apparently not a complete hit yet. There's a lot
of hot sauces on the market out there, and so,
you know, so it's kind of it's a tie style
thing and a viet in Vietnam and all kind of
working it out. But for some people over there, they're like,
oh no, this is the best thing that's ever happened.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
More of this.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Yes, it is quite delicious and I love this story.
It's it's a good one. It's a good company history story.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Yeah. Yeah, but we do have some science for you
up to and including what's up with that bad smell
from the saracha factory?
Speaker 3 (18:54):
Yeah, what's love with that?
Speaker 2 (18:56):
But first we have one more quick break for a
word from our sponsor, and we're back.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
So, as you have probably noticed, a few compounds in
hot peppers are irritants to mammalian mucous membranes.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Uhh, yep, oh, things are starting to fall into place now.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Yes, your your eyeballs, your your mouth, your sinuses. There
are a couple of things in hot peppers that will
irritate any of them. This is also the science behind
why people get so excited about spicy foods. Really, oh really,
kep sayin is great? Yeah, and okay in the case
(19:49):
of siracha, siracha also does have salt and sugar, and
those things also make people kind of excited some of
the time, as we have discussed before. But you know,
those are a essential parts of our diet, so our
brains reward us for seeking them out. Spicy hot stuff.
Not really, Oh, now, there are no essential nutrients in
(20:10):
capsaisin that I'm personally aware of, and it also sugar
and salt do not to the same extent injure us.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Yeah, not that immediate bird anyway.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
But capsasin does interact with our nerves and brains in
a very interesting way. It is one of the active ingredients,
so to speak, in hot peppers, which probably evolved to
make it in order to protect their seeds from fungal
or other microbial infections. Cap Sasin and other similar particles
sometimes called capsasinoids, are antimicrobial. They may also deter the
(20:49):
kinds of animals that eat their fruit without properly spreading
their seeds, like birds, for example, would just swallow the
seeds and then spread them far and wide, where mammals
might chew up the fruit a little bit too much
and kind of masticate the seeds in the process. So
they evolved this this irritant to many mammals taste receptor nerves.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Mm hmmmm, all jokes on you.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Yeah, because then humans got here. We're a little bit
masochistic apparently, all right. We've talked on the show before
about how our taste buds and other taste receptor nerves
work in our mouths and our sinuses, not just on
your tongue. They're in other places mucus membranes. Yeah, all
of those nerves are set up to react to particular compounds.
(21:35):
Some will send signal to your brain when they encounter
sugar or other sweet tasting molecules. Others react to salt
or something bitter or sour or savory or spicy. As
the brain collects those signals repeatedly and from enough individual nerves,
we experience whatever flavor those signals add up to. And
(21:55):
the particular nerve receptors that are activated by capsaicin our
proteins called TRPV one, and these happen to be the
same proteins that tell us when something is physically hot,
like temperatures above about one hundred and nine degrees fahrenheit
that's forty three degrees celsius will trigger it. It's also
the same nerve that tells us about electrical voltage. And
(22:17):
when these nerves are activated and send signals to our brain,
our brain interprets these signals.
Speaker 4 (22:23):
As ah, something is very wrong and it's causing damage.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
We're like, ah ha, well we get that way.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
For a couple of very particular and excellent reasons, because
this warning triggers a couple of reactions. First, you experience pain,
which is the body's way of telling you that you know,
like you've done stuck your hand in a fire.
Speaker 4 (22:43):
You should probably pull it out, probably.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
But your nervous system also gives you extra resources to
help you cope. It may trigger your fight or flight response,
so you're alert. You can react in order to prevent
more damage, like getting away from the fire or putting
it out perhaps, and your nervous system will work to
lessen the pain. It will release endorphins into your system
(23:05):
to block the pain signals, and dopamine to calm you
down and make you feel like you know, everything's going
to be all right. M h. It's been compared to
the rush of euphoria that you get during a runner's high.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
Oh yeah, this is a serious thing.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Yeah. So if you can bear out that first pain
part of spicy foods, that second part can be pretty nice.
There's even been research into how capsation might be used
to moderate chronic pain.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Ooh yeah, m I can't wait to do an episode
on to dive deeper into spicy foods.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Oh yes, absolutely, Oh maybe maybe we could get that
Joe McCormick back. I know he loves talking about that.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
He does.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
We have a lot of spicy food aficionados in the office.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
We do. Oh and I can tell you, I can
tell you from firsthand experience about that runner's high kind
of kind of feeling, euphoria, feeling we uh. One time
on one of Jonathan's Jonathan Strickland's Facebook live shows, he
held a hot sauce eating contest and he had like,
I don't know, maybe like fifteen or twenty bottles lined
up in order of least to most spicy, with the
(24:11):
most including like Carolina Reaper and stuff like that. And
I jumped in after the stuff that bothers my stomach,
but in so right around the like the like Habinaro
session and on. And I guess so I must have
tasted ten or twelve hot sauces just in a row,
and not a lot of them, just like a couple drops.
(24:31):
But like the thing ended, and my boss came up
to talk to me, and I was like, I can't
talk to you right now because I feel so high.
I was just like bracing myself on the table and
I was not okay. I was not okay for like
(24:53):
maybe half an hour, and it wasn't. I mean, I
don't know, like like the physical It was really funny.
Dylan joined us for that exp varience as well. He
as cool as a cucumber. Y'all sounds about right. Remind
me to never play poker with the two of you
because because both of you, I've witnessed eat like the
spiciest stuff that I've ever put in my face, and
you were both like, huh, that's spicy.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
But on the inside we were screaming.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
I was screaming on the outside.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Yeah, but yeah, I'm so interested. I love spicy food.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Yeah, me too.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
But I have I've learned that I'm not well. I
perhaps when I travel to Asia, I learned that maybe
I am not as strong as I like to think
I am.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
It's a different kind of spice.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
It is, it is, and there are different One of
the things that I found when I was researching this
is that there are different types of spices will hit
you a little bit differently. Ye, long versus shortened, Yeah,
stuff like that. So hull Yeah, really excited about looking
more into that. Absolutely, and you do build up a
tolerance over time.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Yes, this is true, and that brings us to the
end of this classic episode, but it also brings us
to some pretty juicy updates.
Speaker 4 (26:12):
Oh my goodness, I feel a little bit.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
I try.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Look, man, I have a personality flaw in that I
love gossip. I love it, and I know that that's
not good. I know that that's like not a positive
human quality, so I really try to tamp it down.
But the further that I looked into this, the more
I was like, Oh, this is way too juicy to
not share with everybody.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
Okay, So yes, all right.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
So our timeline pretty much ended at like twenty sixteen ish,
and I will say that this sauce and or flavor
kind of hit its like peak hipness or popularity back
around when we did this episode, but it's sort of
hasn't gone anywhere in the meanwhile, aside from off the shelves. Occasionally,
I feel like it's less a trend now and more
(27:06):
like a part of daily life, Like it is just
normal to go to a grocery store and see the
flavor saracha marketed on all kinds of packaged products like
ketchup or mayo or ramen or frozen chicken nuggets. Or
potato chips, you know whatever, and I will say that.
In the meanwhile, the Hoifang brand has expanded throughout most
(27:29):
of Southeast Asia. As of twenty eighteen, they were making
some eighty million dollars in revenue every year, up some
sixty million two years prior so expanding. But it has
not all been peachy for Hoifang. The brand has been
going through, as Annie said, as we both just said,
(27:51):
shortages again on and off since summer of twenty twenty, which,
to be fair, like a lot of products hit supply
shoes in twenty twenty, it was sort of a thing.
This has been a more systemic problem.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
All right.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
In July of twenty twenty and then again in April
of twenty twenty two, the company released statements about jalapena
shortages preventing them from doing full production runs, and so
during that like stock ran out and demand has had
third party sellers like basically hot salt scalpers offering bottles
for right thirty dollars and more of pop where they're
(28:26):
usually what like five bucks.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
And you couldn't get it in your when you got delivery.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
No oh, certainly not certainly not no, no, yeah, some
stores were just out right and okay. All of the
strange weather conditions that have happened been happening in the Southwest,
brought on by climate change over the past few years,
you know, drought and fires and flooding. All of these
(28:53):
have indeed affected crop output in that area, and this
is where these jalapenos are grown. Climatologists are in fact
calling the conditions in northern Mexico and or the southwestern
United States a mega drought, like the driest twenty years
that we've had in the last thousand years plus. And
it's actually really concerning to some agricultural experts because small
(29:17):
peppers like these are fairly sturdy, drought resistant kind of plants.
I've seen it called a canary in the coal mine
of climate change in like multiple journalistic outlets. However, I've
also read that these particular jalapenos are like a little
bit more finigy about needing water than most. So I
don't know, I don't know, But at any rate, there's
(29:38):
more to this story.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
Oh do tell all right?
Speaker 2 (29:42):
The trouble actually starts back in twenty sixteen. It either
wasn't really being reported on at the time, or if
it was maybe we weren't looking in the right places.
Like the keyword searches can let you down sometimes, But Okay,
what happened was Hoifang broke up with its long term
pepper farm, Underwood Ranches. They'd been partnered together since nineteen
(30:03):
eighty eight, like going back to before the Whammo factory days.
Speaker 4 (30:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
However, in twenty sixteen, David Tran said that they had
overpaid Underwood by like one point five million dollars for
that year's crop. Tran then started buying from other farms
and sued Underwood for that money. Underwood countersued for business damages,
and they won eventually a twenty three million dollar judgment
(30:28):
in total minus. However, that original one point five million
It is an amazingly sticky mess and so dramatic and
honestly does not paint Tran in a very pleasant light
at all. The long and short of it seems to
be that Tran and his company were kind of banking
(30:50):
on like being able to source cheaper peppers on the
open market instead of contracting with this one farm. But
the weather has not cooperated, you know, these have not
been bumper years, and demand for peppers is outpacing supply
in general, and so without dedicated growers working with him,
Tran has not been able to source enough peppers to
(31:10):
produce enough sauce to keep up with demand for it.
Speaker 4 (31:15):
But but that's.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
That is glossing over the drama. Dude, do you guys
do you guys? Do you guys want to talk about
the drama?
Speaker 3 (31:21):
You know we do?
Speaker 2 (31:23):
Okay, what we have here is a case of food
fraud or like food related fraud at any rate.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
Uh okay?
Speaker 2 (31:33):
So Haifang Foods had been partnered with Underwood Ranches for
twenty eight years through this period of tremendous growth that
the sauce brand went through. Right, They sometimes sourced peppers
from other farms to meet demand, which was fine, But
Tran also worked really closely with Craig Underwood, the farm's owner,
on some mutually beneficial deals over the years. According to
(31:56):
the court paperwork, which is a fascinating read, by the way,
around two thousand and six, when Tran was getting ready
to move into that even bigger plant in Irwindale, Tran
came to Underwood all like, Hey, I need more peppers.
I would rather buy peppers from you, So if you
expand your acreage. I'll pay you by the acre grown
(32:18):
instead of by the pounds produced, So like, you don't
have to worry about putting all your peppers in one basket.
Like even if you have a lousy crop one year,
I'll pay you the same for it. However, it turns
out this was a pretty great deal for Underwood. So
over the next ten years, Underwood went from making about
a quarter of its revenue selling peppers to Hoifong to
(32:40):
making like eighty percent of its revenue there with trans encouragement,
they leased a bunch more land for pepper growing. They
developed this new mechanical harvester to help them pick more efficiently.
They were just really bouncing along with this mutual success
of these peppers and this brand of sauce. And this
brings us to twenty sixteen. Everything seemed to be going
(33:04):
relatively business as usual. Through the first week of November
of twenty sixteen, Craig, Underwood and Tran met to talk
about their plan for the twenty seventeen season. They talked
about the preparations that were already underwayh Tran agreed to
eighteen million dollars in advance payments for what would become
seventeen hundred acres of peppers, which he would eventually pay
(33:28):
a little over twenty two million four in total. Okay,
lots of money, lots of land, lots of peppers. A
week later, the floor falls out. Tran suddenly says that
Underwood needs to start selling him peppers by the ton,
not by the acre, and furthermore at like five hundred
(33:50):
bucks a ton, which I don't know anything about peppers,
but I guess that's low, and that Underwood needed to
make the contract for this. With this this new company
that Tran had started called Chiliko okay, which is all
a lot, especially a week after going through this whole
(34:11):
plan for twenty seventeen. So it turns out the Tran,
along with Hoifung's COO, Donna Lamb, who happens to be
Tran's sister in law, they had been working on starting
up this company, Chiliko for a couple of years, with
the purpose of Chiliico obtaining peppers for Hoifung Foods. Tran
(34:31):
later testified that he created the company in order to
give ownership to Lamb and Liu of a salary increase
at Hoifung because he didn't think that the board would
have approved the salary increase, but that's not really here
nor there. But so anyway, so suddenly Tran was saying
that that Underwood had to sell him peppers by the
ton at five hundred bucks a ten and that he
actually had to sell them to Chili Coo. But Chili
(34:54):
Coo didn't even have the liquidity to send along any
advanced payments and Hoifo wasn't going to cover it either. Ooh,
and meanwhile, Tran had tried to hire Underwood's COO won
Jim Roberts away from Underwood three times. The first one
(35:20):
Roberts had sort of like blown off as a weird mistake.
The second two happened in the middle of this whole
like November December twenty sixteen, absolute cluster hug.
Speaker 4 (35:31):
So okay, so.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Roberts was like, no, I'm not doing that, no, thank you.
Underwood said no to all of this and thus ended
the contract, which was a total financial disaster for Underwood.
You know, they had empty farmland they couldn't get out
of their leases. This contract ending cut again eighty percent
(35:53):
of their revenue. They had to lay off like forty employees,
like half of its staff immediately. Hoifang, meanwhile, was fine
for the moment, like they contracted out with other farms
and showed those other farms confidential video the Underwood had
sent of how this new mechanical harvester that they had
developed worked ooooooooo. And then and then Hoifong sued Underwood
(36:25):
for that one point five million dollars in overpayments for
twenty sixteen's crop. So Underwood countersuit for a breach of
contract and intentional contractual fraud, basically saying, like y'all knew
that you didn't want to keep working with us, you
encouraged us to get even deeper into the hole for you,
(36:49):
and then you dumped us. That's unchill and yeah, and
the jury awarded Underwood thirteen million dollars in actual damages
and an extra ten mins million dollars in punitive damages
to be paid by Huifang minus at original one point
five million. But the mess, the mess did not end there.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
No, because Hoifang appealed.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
By then, this was twenty nineteen. You know, Underwood had
already spent a couple of years in the whole now,
and they were looking at another couple more In the
appeals process before potentially seeing the settlement money. So they
wound up accepting a litigation finance deal from an investment firm.
The firm like floated them four million bucks that they
would not have to pay back if they eventually lost
(37:38):
to the case, but that they would have to pay
back double if they eventually won investment at one hundred
percent hoofta. But it was kind of what they had
to do to continue with this court process. They didn't
have the money for it otherwise. The courts did eventually
decide to uphold the original decision Hoifong had to pay
(38:00):
Underwood out in summer of twenty twenty one. Yeah, like wow,
like just holy like y'all could have made this better
for yourselves at any.
Speaker 4 (38:15):
Point, but you did not.
Speaker 3 (38:18):
No, just dug a hole deeper and deeper. Houfta.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
Uh Leslie Stall actually did a segment about this whole
thing on Sixty Minutes in late twenty twenty two with
a focus on that litigation funding aspect, because you know,
it's basically like betting on the outcome of a court case.
And although it can be cool because right like it
can help small businesses that can't afford to go through
with court cases. But it's also this multi billion dollar
(38:49):
investment business that has very little oversight, and some experts
worry that it's predatory or even just on a very
basic level, changing the way that the law works in
this country.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
So that's the whole thing. A bottle of sachia.
Speaker 4 (39:10):
I think it's probably cool for small businesses.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Most of the time, big businesses are actually trying to
get are the ones trying to get this stuff shut
down and regulated more strongly, which always makes me think
it's a good idea. However, I would say that on
like a personal level, you should probably never take out
one of these loans because it's a little bit more
hazardous and you might not fully understand what you're getting
into anyway.
Speaker 4 (39:33):
Okay that aside, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Underwood, you know, paid their eight million bucks back to
this investment firm, and they're doing They're doing great now.
They occasionally get reached out to for interviews about how
the Jalapanio climate change issue is going, and they're like,
we have no problem sourcing peppers.
Speaker 4 (39:55):
We're doing great.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
They started producing their own saracha and some ball and
garlic chili paste in twenty twenty three, which I think
is very funny. Yes, you can buy that at Underwood
Ranches dot com if you so choose to, And yeah,
(40:24):
it would not.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
End of the day.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
It really wouldn't surprise me if Hoifang Foods was having
so much trouble sourcing peppers because farmers are unwilling to
work with them.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
Yeah, makes sense.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
I feel like after watching all that go down, I
would also be reticent.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
I will say also, a thing that I've seen happen
in the fallout of all of this is that a
lot of people are like, you can make your own sarachias.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
Not that hard. I have not tried it. I know
neither here nor there, but I just know I have
seen a lot of articles like thank you.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
Yeah, there's certainly a lot of articles out there that
are that are like, out of siracha, here's substitutions for you.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
Go for it.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
Yeah, I'm definitely using I have like half a bottle left,
and I use it so sparingly, quite hilarious.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
I think I think I have like a local supermarket
brand at this point, which I did before I knew
all of this, Although yeah, I think right that is
probably what I shall continue doing.
Speaker 3 (41:43):
Well, what drama to visit in this revisit.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
Yeah, yeah, thank you all for coming with me and
my gossip bender.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
Oh thank you and yes listeners.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
If you have any information about the thoughts about this
recipes brands, please let us know. You can email us
at hello at sapod dot com, and we are also.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
On social media. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram at saver pod and we do hope to
hear from you.
Speaker 4 (42:22):
Savor is production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or.
Speaker 4 (42:28):
Wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
Thanks as always to our superproducers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard.
Thanks to you for listening, and we hope that lots
more good things are coming your way
Hello, and welcome to Saber Productive. iHeartRadio. I'm Annie Reese
and I'm.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Lauren vogel Bum and today we have a classic episode
and an update for you about si Rachia.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Oh yes, because a lot, as I'm sure a lot
of you have probably heard, has going on in the
world of Siracha. Oh okay, well right, So so this
episode originally aired in April of twenty eighteen, so our timeline,
you know, cuts off there. And I was not aware
that there was drama.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Oh I was because.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Because it suddenly became impossible to find Siracha. Right, you
could find it on eBay for like one hundred plus dollars. Sure,
and so I was you know, I had.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
Being you you looked into it, sure.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
And I learned a lot.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Well, okay, so we're gonna it's it's a super fun episode.
So we're let's go ahead and run the episode and
then afterwards we'll do some updates.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Yeah, yes, okay, here we go.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Hello, and welcome to food Stuff. I'm Annie Resa and
I'm Lauren vocal Bam.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
And all of your intro lines are so good. And
then I always wind up being the one who's who's
tasked with delivering though.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Yeah, because you're so good at delivering intro lines.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Oh well, thank you.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
This is food Stuff's hottest episode to date.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, it is, see because we're talking about sarracha siracha.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Can you remember the first time you had siracha?
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Oh goodness? Can I No? I cannot. I think the
first time that I realized that it was becoming very
common was maybe about oh, I want to say.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
Six years ago, right around then.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Yeah. Maybe wait, maybe eight?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Oh good.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
I feel like it's been a while a while.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Maybe it was more like ten. Maybe I have no idea.
You have no clue what dates are made of. Yeah.
But when I started seeing it in like in like.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Pubs, oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Like otherwise American or English style pubs, I was just like, oh,
this is this is here now real real, yeah, big time.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
How about you. I think I tried it.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
I tried it pretty recently, and I remember I think
it was our very own Tracy V. Wilson, who she
was talking about how most of her food she saw
as like a conveyance to get saracha to her mouth
or something, and I was like, well, I've got to
try this, and I very overly ambitiously. I just put
(03:03):
way too much. It was good, but it's it's spicy, spicy.
Yeah yeah, and I like tears were coming out, nose
was running, and I remember being sad that this was
my first experience, but knowing it was good and I
should return.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Yeah, right again, that was my first sushi with Sabby experience.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Oh yeah, but.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Another story, another episode, Yes, that was Sabby episode.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
Yeah, so s racha, what is it for me?
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Always spicier than I think every single time, but I do. Yeah,
I love this stuff. It's called rooster sauce pretty commonly
because of the rooster logo based on Hoifong's brand siracha
based on inventors the inventor's zodiac sign. Yeah, I thought
that was an interesting fact or. It's also sometimes called
(03:55):
hipster ketchup.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
It's a condiment or of sauce eate up of red pepper, vinegar, garlic, sugar, and.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Salt, plus maybe a couple extra preservatives to prevent microbial
growth and to keep it bright red.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Right, And it is spicy, about one thousand to two thousand,
five hundred units on the Scoville scale.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Tangy, a little sweet.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
The Scovale scale if you haven't heard of it, or
if you are not sure how it works. Ranks, how
like spicy hot things are based on the sensitivity of
human taste buds. If you take a spicy thing and
dilute it with water, eventually you will get to the
point where the human tongue cannot detect the heat Anymore's
(04:39):
ranking of one thousand to two thousand, five hundred Scoville
heat units means that you would have to dilute it
by that many times in order to make the heat undetectable.
So like, if you have an ounce of sperachia, you'd
have to add anywhere from one thousand to two thousand,
five hundred ounces of water before you wouldn't be able
to feel the heat at all anymore.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
That's quite a lot of water, I know.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Also fun facts about the Scoville scale. This is determined
these days through much more precise, high performance liquid chromatography
instead of like physical taste testers as it was back
in the nineteen teens when it was invented. I do
not envy those people. I like spice a lot, but
whoof Yeah, Also, the scale does have a bottom. I
think think of something like bell peppers or pimento perhaps,
(05:22):
but it does not have a top Carolina Reapers are
among the world's hottest known peppers and have been ranked
at over two million shus oh Man.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
I think there's a video of Joe McCormick, one of
our coworkers, trying at Carolina reaper, just straight up eating
it and it kind of went all wrong, and you
feel bad for him, but it's also funny. Well, it
went wrong in the sense that it's incredibly spicy. You
can tell just by watching, Oh said it felt like
I think getting stung by thousands of bees.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
Oh yeah, oh well, now I remember that video.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Yeah, but it is mother in law was trying to
be helpful and it was like, I'll get you some milk,
and she gave him some milk and he took a
sip and it was expired, like really expired, really bad expired.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
And then we tried that chip.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Yeah. Over on the Facebook live show Snack Stuff that
Ben Ball and and I do, our producer Ramsey had
gotten us one of these Grim Reaper Carolina chip. It's
a single chip. It comes into single coffee shaped package. Yeah,
and we had we shared like a fraction of it.
And then after the show was over and he atee
a fraction of it too, And I responded much more
(06:37):
strongly than she did.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
It was quite spicy.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
It was quite spicy.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
Your poker face is great.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
I learned from Lady Gaga. The biggest brand of saracha
sauce is the aforementioned Hoy Funk Foods in the United States,
and that's the classic bottle you see with the.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
Green with the green cap and the green rooster logo.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Yes. Yeah, it's owned by David Tran of Vietnamese immigrant
The name Suracha itself comes from hot sauces from Si Racha,
a town in Thailand, and those chilies are key, not
just for obvious reasons, but also because they are made.
Siracha is made with fresh chilies, not dried chili. Yeah,
and this has presented some obstacles. According to Tran quote,
(07:20):
we can only grow as quickly as our ability to
harvest chilies grows. In twenty sixteen, that came out to
one hundred million pounds around forty five million kilos of
fresh chilies. That has to last an entire year, which, well,
due to our love of this stuff, is not necessarily
(07:41):
a given. And I will touch on this later, but
that's one of the reasons why you don't see ads
for siracha.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Oh huh.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
They're like, well, we basically sell everything that we make already.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
So yeah, we're doing what we can. Let's look at
some numbers. If we take hot sauce as a whole,
the industry is in the top ten of America's fastest
growing and globally, sales exceed one billion dollars. What yeah
HOI fun food Sacha sold twenty million bottles in twenty sixteen,
(08:16):
coming out to around sixteen million dollars in At twenty thirteen,
Los Angeles hosted the first La Seracha Festival. I hear
tail there's a whole serracha manu at Taco Bell but
it is or was, I'm not sure if it's still around,
made in house, not the Hoifung brand.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
If any of you listeners know about that.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Right and let us know.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Yeah. One of the reasons it's so popular is because
it is so versatile. It's good straight but also good
for mixing with other sauces or condiments like mayo. Oh yeah,
you can add it to soups like fu use it
as a marinade in cocktails. It was Bonapetite's ingredient of
the Year and twenty ten.
Speaker 4 (08:57):
I had a siracha milkshake one time.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
What. Yeah, Yeah, I can't say that I enjoyed the
experience of it.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Was it like ice cream?
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Yeah? And like peanuts, like peanut sauce.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
This is blowing my mind.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Is this local local plays?
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Yeah? It was at Pallukaville. Oh.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Yes, they have many an interesting milkshake over there.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yeah, this one might have been too interesting.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Too too much perhaps, However, it shows that uh siracha
can be used in many, many ways and it has
been absolutely Yes. A lot of copycats are trying to
get in on this game, and the lawyer behind Saracha's
creator reports this means an annual four to five infringement complaints.
Like people, I've seen pictures. The bottle is very similar designed.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Right, because they they don't actually have it copyrighted. That
anyone can make a sauce call it siracha.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Sure, but you the logo, the look precisely is what
is getting these copycats in trouble and tran. The guy
behind Serracha is a very interesting fellow.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Despite being at.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
The helm of an extremely lucrative brand, the success of
which has led to a cult like following merchandise and
a documentary. He isn't interested in being filthy rich, or
that's not his main goal anyway. He claims to never
have raised Seracha's wholesale price, never mind inflation. He says
he's not entirely sure who the distributors are, just that
(10:25):
he has been using the same ten for over ten years,
and that he's only certain that it's sold in the US, Canada,
and Europe, but he speculates it sold.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
In other places. He doesn't know for sure.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
I would speculate that too, though, I think that's probably
a very good guess. Yes, Sir Racha's never been officially advertised.
Like I mentioned, He's refuted several offers to buy the
company and intends to keep it in the family his
son and daughter of the president and vice president, respectively.
And he once said, rather than being a billionaire, he
(10:57):
simply wanted to make a fresh chili sauce so that
everyone who wants hoy fun can have it.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Nothing more. Huh, Yeah, that is not your typical CEO, no.
I think.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
He also said he's going to keep making it until
no one wants it anymore and then they'll stop.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Wow, I think that's a long way off based on
some of yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
The coming details.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Yes, I would say, probably going to be making it
for a lot longer. So let's look at some of
those details that led to sacha becoming this huge behemoth
of a condiment.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Right, But first let's take a quick break for a
word from our sponsor, and we're back.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
The history of saracha goes all the way back to
nine thousand BCE, when someone was looking to add a
kick to their omelet.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
No, just kidding. It actually all started with Thomas Jefferson
in France. What now, buddy, fake out.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
The consensus is that the first person to make siacha
was a Thai woman named Tannam Chukapuk over eighty years previous.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
At first, she.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Made the stuff mostly for her friends and family, but
eventually she made it available for purchase under the name
Siraha Pant. This version is a bit thinner and tangier
than what most of us are probably used to. You
can still find it in some specialty stores and I
believe on Amazon Prime if you are interested. If we
look at David Tran and Hoi Fun Foods Suracha specifically,
(12:43):
Tran had been working with Chili in Vietnam since nineteen
seventy five. His first hot sauce, pepper Sate, came in
baby food jars and he mostly reserved them also for
his family members, and I think Can delivered them on
a bike.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
In nineteen seventy nine, escaping from increasing persecution of Chinese
people by the new Communist government in Vietnam, he took
a freighter by the name of Hoi Fung to the
United States, and later the name of the freighter would
be the inspiration for the name of his company, Huh Yeah.
Chan arrived to the US as a refugee. He found
(13:22):
the American hot sauce scene lacking, so he set out
to come up with his own recipe. He set up
shop in Chinatown near a, Los Angeles in a five
thousand square foot building in nineteen eighty. Along with this
pepper sate sauce, he started selling a chili, garlic sauce,
sambule olik and of course suracha.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Various kinds of sembole are my other favorite thing on
the planet. I add them to all the stuff I'm
not entirely sure what those are. To be honest, I
saw them on the website and I'm very interested to
try them. I've got like three different kinds in my
house right now. All, okay, we work this out.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Yes, awesome.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
It's like a thicker, chunkier kind of chili.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Sauce, kind of like maybe salsa meets chili sauce.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Like salsa meets sirechia.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Yeah oo, yep, I'm on board.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
At first, transold his creations out of the back of
a van, a blue Chevy van, according to the Hoifan website. Yep,
he delivered directly to Asian restaurants. As sales and profits
increased at an unforeseen rate. Over seven years, Chan moved
to a much larger sixty eight thousand square foot facility
(14:36):
in Rosemead, California, started developing his own custom equipment, and the.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Company was born. Yes.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
By nineteen ninety six, sixty eight thousand square feet was
not enough to satisfy surata demand, and Hoifung moved two
doors down to the old Whammo building, upgrading to one
hundred and seventy thousand square feet. If you don't know
what Whammo was, it was a place that sold frisbee
slipping sides hula.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Hoops from what is it?
Speaker 2 (15:05):
From Whammo? I don't know. There was this like perky
lady voice or child voice that was always at the
end of the.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Commercials Man, I was so good at hula hooping and this.
I'd forgotten about slipping sides until we did this, And
now I'm like nostalgic for that.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
The slipping side time of my life.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
I always injured myself. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
They were painful, like there's no cushioning right, you launched
yourself and you're just pretty much.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
In belly flopping onto hard soil.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
But still I missed them. Nonetheless, nostage is funny that way.
Trans said of this in the documentary about Saracha. Before
that building was filled full with hula hoops, now filled with.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Chili I love. But even that wasn't enough.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Trans relocated operations to a six hundred and fifty thousand
square foot facility in Erwindale, California, in twenty ten, though
it wasn't up and running until a few years later.
The facility could produce three thousand bottles of seracha per hour.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Huh yeah, And this brings up.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
The Great Saracha Panic of twenty thirteen.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
All it was very serious.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
I actually do remember this one.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Yeah, yeah, it seems and not. Everyone in erwin Dale
was thrilled with the new siracha factory and specifically the smell.
A Los Angeles Superior Court ordered the factory to shut down,
to which Tran hung up a sign that read, in
all caps.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
No cheer gas made here.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Yeah, Seracha had to pause operations. Hence, Panic ten cities
contacted Tran offering to host the factory. However, moving would
not be so easy. All of the fresh chilis and
chili farmers were in California and he didn't want to
have to lose all of his employ The solution came
in the form of an upgraded filter for the ventilation system,
(17:05):
and the lawsuit was dropped in twenty fourteen. That same year,
Tran open the doors to his factory to the public
for the first time, in his words, to prove they
don't make tear gas inside. It sounds like a very
Willy Wonka esque tour too.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
I really want to go.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Yeah, apparently there's there's weird like memorabilia rooms. They have
fire hydrants that are specially branded with the serrachia loco.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
In Atlanta.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
I remember this happening because one of my favorite local
food trucks, Yumbee, they have it Caeso siacha sauce, and
as you can guess, it's very popular. And when the
serracha panic happened, the customer fan base freaked out that
their sauce habits would be impacted, and Yumbee brought out
all the saracha they could find to make sure that
(17:56):
they would not run out.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
People are very serious about this.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
They are well and there. Yes, their case of siracha
is really tasty, so I understand it is it is.
As of twenty sixteen, Haifung's siracha finally started being distributed
in his home country of Vietnam.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
Oh, where it is popular.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Although apparently not a complete hit yet. There's a lot
of hot sauces on the market out there, and so,
you know, so it's kind of it's a tie style
thing and a viet in Vietnam and all kind of
working it out. But for some people over there, they're like,
oh no, this is the best thing that's ever happened.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
More of this.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Yes, it is quite delicious and I love this story.
It's it's a good one. It's a good company history story.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Yeah. Yeah, but we do have some science for you
up to and including what's up with that bad smell
from the saracha factory?
Speaker 3 (18:54):
Yeah, what's love with that?
Speaker 2 (18:56):
But first we have one more quick break for a
word from our sponsor, and we're back.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
So, as you have probably noticed, a few compounds in
hot peppers are irritants to mammalian mucous membranes.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Uhh, yep, oh, things are starting to fall into place now.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Yes, your your eyeballs, your your mouth, your sinuses. There
are a couple of things in hot peppers that will
irritate any of them. This is also the science behind
why people get so excited about spicy foods. Really, oh really,
kep sayin is great? Yeah, and okay in the case
(19:49):
of siracha, siracha also does have salt and sugar, and
those things also make people kind of excited some of
the time, as we have discussed before. But you know,
those are a essential parts of our diet, so our
brains reward us for seeking them out. Spicy hot stuff.
Not really, Oh, now, there are no essential nutrients in
(20:10):
capsaisin that I'm personally aware of, and it also sugar
and salt do not to the same extent injure us.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Yeah, not that immediate bird anyway.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
But capsasin does interact with our nerves and brains in
a very interesting way. It is one of the active ingredients,
so to speak, in hot peppers, which probably evolved to
make it in order to protect their seeds from fungal
or other microbial infections. Cap Sasin and other similar particles
sometimes called capsasinoids, are antimicrobial. They may also deter the
(20:49):
kinds of animals that eat their fruit without properly spreading
their seeds, like birds, for example, would just swallow the
seeds and then spread them far and wide, where mammals
might chew up the fruit a little bit too much
and kind of masticate the seeds in the process. So
they evolved this this irritant to many mammals taste receptor nerves.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Mm hmmmm, all jokes on you.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Yeah, because then humans got here. We're a little bit
masochistic apparently, all right. We've talked on the show before
about how our taste buds and other taste receptor nerves
work in our mouths and our sinuses, not just on
your tongue. They're in other places mucus membranes. Yeah, all
of those nerves are set up to react to particular compounds.
(21:35):
Some will send signal to your brain when they encounter
sugar or other sweet tasting molecules. Others react to salt
or something bitter or sour or savory or spicy. As
the brain collects those signals repeatedly and from enough individual nerves,
we experience whatever flavor those signals add up to. And
(21:55):
the particular nerve receptors that are activated by capsaicin our
proteins called TRPV one, and these happen to be the
same proteins that tell us when something is physically hot,
like temperatures above about one hundred and nine degrees fahrenheit
that's forty three degrees celsius will trigger it. It's also
the same nerve that tells us about electrical voltage. And
(22:17):
when these nerves are activated and send signals to our brain,
our brain interprets these signals.
Speaker 4 (22:23):
As ah, something is very wrong and it's causing damage.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
We're like, ah ha, well we get that way.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
For a couple of very particular and excellent reasons, because
this warning triggers a couple of reactions. First, you experience pain,
which is the body's way of telling you that you know,
like you've done stuck your hand in a fire.
Speaker 4 (22:43):
You should probably pull it out, probably.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
But your nervous system also gives you extra resources to
help you cope. It may trigger your fight or flight response,
so you're alert. You can react in order to prevent
more damage, like getting away from the fire or putting
it out perhaps, and your nervous system will work to
lessen the pain. It will release endorphins into your system
(23:05):
to block the pain signals, and dopamine to calm you
down and make you feel like you know, everything's going
to be all right. M h. It's been compared to
the rush of euphoria that you get during a runner's high.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
Oh yeah, this is a serious thing.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Yeah. So if you can bear out that first pain
part of spicy foods, that second part can be pretty nice.
There's even been research into how capsation might be used
to moderate chronic pain.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Ooh yeah, m I can't wait to do an episode
on to dive deeper into spicy foods.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Oh yes, absolutely, Oh maybe maybe we could get that
Joe McCormick back. I know he loves talking about that.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
He does.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
We have a lot of spicy food aficionados in the office.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
We do. Oh and I can tell you, I can
tell you from firsthand experience about that runner's high kind
of kind of feeling, euphoria, feeling we uh. One time
on one of Jonathan's Jonathan Strickland's Facebook live shows, he
held a hot sauce eating contest and he had like,
I don't know, maybe like fifteen or twenty bottles lined
up in order of least to most spicy, with the
(24:11):
most including like Carolina Reaper and stuff like that. And
I jumped in after the stuff that bothers my stomach,
but in so right around the like the like Habinaro
session and on. And I guess so I must have
tasted ten or twelve hot sauces just in a row,
and not a lot of them, just like a couple drops.
(24:31):
But like the thing ended, and my boss came up
to talk to me, and I was like, I can't
talk to you right now because I feel so high.
I was just like bracing myself on the table and
I was not okay. I was not okay for like
(24:53):
maybe half an hour, and it wasn't. I mean, I
don't know, like like the physical It was really funny.
Dylan joined us for that exp varience as well. He
as cool as a cucumber. Y'all sounds about right. Remind
me to never play poker with the two of you
because because both of you, I've witnessed eat like the
spiciest stuff that I've ever put in my face, and
you were both like, huh, that's spicy.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
But on the inside we were screaming.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
I was screaming on the outside.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Yeah, but yeah, I'm so interested. I love spicy food.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Yeah, me too.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
But I have I've learned that I'm not well. I
perhaps when I travel to Asia, I learned that maybe
I am not as strong as I like to think
I am.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
It's a different kind of spice.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
It is, it is, and there are different One of
the things that I found when I was researching this
is that there are different types of spices will hit
you a little bit differently. Ye, long versus shortened, Yeah,
stuff like that. So hull Yeah, really excited about looking
more into that. Absolutely, and you do build up a
tolerance over time.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Yes, this is true, and that brings us to the
end of this classic episode, but it also brings us
to some pretty juicy updates.
Speaker 4 (26:12):
Oh my goodness, I feel a little bit.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
I try.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Look, man, I have a personality flaw in that I
love gossip. I love it, and I know that that's
not good. I know that that's like not a positive
human quality, so I really try to tamp it down.
But the further that I looked into this, the more
I was like, Oh, this is way too juicy to
not share with everybody.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
Okay, So yes, all right.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
So our timeline pretty much ended at like twenty sixteen ish,
and I will say that this sauce and or flavor
kind of hit its like peak hipness or popularity back
around when we did this episode, but it's sort of
hasn't gone anywhere in the meanwhile, aside from off the shelves. Occasionally,
I feel like it's less a trend now and more
(27:06):
like a part of daily life, Like it is just
normal to go to a grocery store and see the
flavor saracha marketed on all kinds of packaged products like
ketchup or mayo or ramen or frozen chicken nuggets. Or
potato chips, you know whatever, and I will say that.
In the meanwhile, the Hoifang brand has expanded throughout most
(27:29):
of Southeast Asia. As of twenty eighteen, they were making
some eighty million dollars in revenue every year, up some
sixty million two years prior so expanding. But it has
not all been peachy for Hoifang. The brand has been
going through, as Annie said, as we both just said,
(27:51):
shortages again on and off since summer of twenty twenty, which,
to be fair, like a lot of products hit supply
shoes in twenty twenty, it was sort of a thing.
This has been a more systemic problem.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
All right.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
In July of twenty twenty and then again in April
of twenty twenty two, the company released statements about jalapena
shortages preventing them from doing full production runs, and so
during that like stock ran out and demand has had
third party sellers like basically hot salt scalpers offering bottles
for right thirty dollars and more of pop where they're
(28:26):
usually what like five bucks.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
And you couldn't get it in your when you got delivery.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
No oh, certainly not certainly not no, no, yeah, some
stores were just out right and okay. All of the
strange weather conditions that have happened been happening in the Southwest,
brought on by climate change over the past few years,
you know, drought and fires and flooding. All of these
(28:53):
have indeed affected crop output in that area, and this
is where these jalapenos are grown. Climatologists are in fact
calling the conditions in northern Mexico and or the southwestern
United States a mega drought, like the driest twenty years
that we've had in the last thousand years plus. And
it's actually really concerning to some agricultural experts because small
(29:17):
peppers like these are fairly sturdy, drought resistant kind of plants.
I've seen it called a canary in the coal mine
of climate change in like multiple journalistic outlets. However, I've
also read that these particular jalapenos are like a little
bit more finigy about needing water than most. So I
don't know, I don't know, But at any rate, there's
(29:38):
more to this story.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
Oh do tell all right?
Speaker 2 (29:42):
The trouble actually starts back in twenty sixteen. It either
wasn't really being reported on at the time, or if
it was maybe we weren't looking in the right places.
Like the keyword searches can let you down sometimes, But Okay,
what happened was Hoifang broke up with its long term
pepper farm, Underwood Ranches. They'd been partnered together since nineteen
(30:03):
eighty eight, like going back to before the Whammo factory days.
Speaker 4 (30:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
However, in twenty sixteen, David Tran said that they had
overpaid Underwood by like one point five million dollars for
that year's crop. Tran then started buying from other farms
and sued Underwood for that money. Underwood countersued for business damages,
and they won eventually a twenty three million dollar judgment
(30:28):
in total minus. However, that original one point five million
It is an amazingly sticky mess and so dramatic and
honestly does not paint Tran in a very pleasant light
at all. The long and short of it seems to
be that Tran and his company were kind of banking
(30:50):
on like being able to source cheaper peppers on the
open market instead of contracting with this one farm. But
the weather has not cooperated, you know, these have not
been bumper years, and demand for peppers is outpacing supply
in general, and so without dedicated growers working with him,
Tran has not been able to source enough peppers to
(31:10):
produce enough sauce to keep up with demand for it.
Speaker 4 (31:15):
But but that's.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
That is glossing over the drama. Dude, do you guys
do you guys? Do you guys want to talk about
the drama?
Speaker 3 (31:21):
You know we do?
Speaker 2 (31:23):
Okay, what we have here is a case of food
fraud or like food related fraud at any rate.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
Uh okay?
Speaker 2 (31:33):
So Haifang Foods had been partnered with Underwood Ranches for
twenty eight years through this period of tremendous growth that
the sauce brand went through. Right, They sometimes sourced peppers
from other farms to meet demand, which was fine, But
Tran also worked really closely with Craig Underwood, the farm's owner,
on some mutually beneficial deals over the years. According to
(31:56):
the court paperwork, which is a fascinating read, by the way,
around two thousand and six, when Tran was getting ready
to move into that even bigger plant in Irwindale, Tran
came to Underwood all like, Hey, I need more peppers.
I would rather buy peppers from you, So if you
expand your acreage. I'll pay you by the acre grown
(32:18):
instead of by the pounds produced, So like, you don't
have to worry about putting all your peppers in one basket.
Like even if you have a lousy crop one year,
I'll pay you the same for it. However, it turns
out this was a pretty great deal for Underwood. So
over the next ten years, Underwood went from making about
a quarter of its revenue selling peppers to Hoifong to
(32:40):
making like eighty percent of its revenue there with trans encouragement,
they leased a bunch more land for pepper growing. They
developed this new mechanical harvester to help them pick more efficiently.
They were just really bouncing along with this mutual success
of these peppers and this brand of sauce. And this
brings us to twenty sixteen. Everything seemed to be going
(33:04):
relatively business as usual. Through the first week of November
of twenty sixteen, Craig, Underwood and Tran met to talk
about their plan for the twenty seventeen season. They talked
about the preparations that were already underwayh Tran agreed to
eighteen million dollars in advance payments for what would become
seventeen hundred acres of peppers, which he would eventually pay
(33:28):
a little over twenty two million four in total. Okay,
lots of money, lots of land, lots of peppers. A
week later, the floor falls out. Tran suddenly says that
Underwood needs to start selling him peppers by the ton,
not by the acre, and furthermore at like five hundred
(33:50):
bucks a ton, which I don't know anything about peppers,
but I guess that's low, and that Underwood needed to
make the contract for this. With this this new company
that Tran had started called Chiliko okay, which is all
a lot, especially a week after going through this whole
(34:11):
plan for twenty seventeen. So it turns out the Tran,
along with Hoifung's COO, Donna Lamb, who happens to be
Tran's sister in law, they had been working on starting
up this company, Chiliko for a couple of years, with
the purpose of Chiliico obtaining peppers for Hoifung Foods. Tran
(34:31):
later testified that he created the company in order to
give ownership to Lamb and Liu of a salary increase
at Hoifung because he didn't think that the board would
have approved the salary increase, but that's not really here
nor there. But so anyway, so suddenly Tran was saying
that that Underwood had to sell him peppers by the
ton at five hundred bucks a ten and that he
actually had to sell them to Chili Coo. But Chili
(34:54):
Coo didn't even have the liquidity to send along any
advanced payments and Hoifo wasn't going to cover it either. Ooh,
and meanwhile, Tran had tried to hire Underwood's COO won
Jim Roberts away from Underwood three times. The first one
(35:20):
Roberts had sort of like blown off as a weird mistake.
The second two happened in the middle of this whole
like November December twenty sixteen, absolute cluster hug.
Speaker 4 (35:31):
So okay, so.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Roberts was like, no, I'm not doing that, no, thank you.
Underwood said no to all of this and thus ended
the contract, which was a total financial disaster for Underwood.
You know, they had empty farmland they couldn't get out
of their leases. This contract ending cut again eighty percent
(35:53):
of their revenue. They had to lay off like forty employees,
like half of its staff immediately. Hoifang, meanwhile, was fine
for the moment, like they contracted out with other farms
and showed those other farms confidential video the Underwood had
sent of how this new mechanical harvester that they had
developed worked ooooooooo. And then and then Hoifong sued Underwood
(36:25):
for that one point five million dollars in overpayments for
twenty sixteen's crop. So Underwood countersuit for a breach of
contract and intentional contractual fraud, basically saying, like y'all knew
that you didn't want to keep working with us, you
encouraged us to get even deeper into the hole for you,
(36:49):
and then you dumped us. That's unchill and yeah, and
the jury awarded Underwood thirteen million dollars in actual damages
and an extra ten mins million dollars in punitive damages
to be paid by Huifang minus at original one point
five million. But the mess, the mess did not end there.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
No, because Hoifang appealed.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
By then, this was twenty nineteen. You know, Underwood had
already spent a couple of years in the whole now,
and they were looking at another couple more In the
appeals process before potentially seeing the settlement money. So they
wound up accepting a litigation finance deal from an investment firm.
The firm like floated them four million bucks that they
would not have to pay back if they eventually lost
(37:38):
to the case, but that they would have to pay
back double if they eventually won investment at one hundred
percent hoofta. But it was kind of what they had
to do to continue with this court process. They didn't
have the money for it otherwise. The courts did eventually
decide to uphold the original decision Hoifong had to pay
(38:00):
Underwood out in summer of twenty twenty one. Yeah, like wow,
like just holy like y'all could have made this better
for yourselves at any.
Speaker 4 (38:15):
Point, but you did not.
Speaker 3 (38:18):
No, just dug a hole deeper and deeper. Houfta.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
Uh Leslie Stall actually did a segment about this whole
thing on Sixty Minutes in late twenty twenty two with
a focus on that litigation funding aspect, because you know,
it's basically like betting on the outcome of a court case.
And although it can be cool because right like it
can help small businesses that can't afford to go through
with court cases. But it's also this multi billion dollar
(38:49):
investment business that has very little oversight, and some experts
worry that it's predatory or even just on a very
basic level, changing the way that the law works in
this country.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
So that's the whole thing. A bottle of sachia.
Speaker 4 (39:10):
I think it's probably cool for small businesses.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Most of the time, big businesses are actually trying to
get are the ones trying to get this stuff shut
down and regulated more strongly, which always makes me think
it's a good idea. However, I would say that on
like a personal level, you should probably never take out
one of these loans because it's a little bit more
hazardous and you might not fully understand what you're getting
into anyway.
Speaker 4 (39:33):
Okay that aside, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Underwood, you know, paid their eight million bucks back to
this investment firm, and they're doing They're doing great now.
They occasionally get reached out to for interviews about how
the Jalapanio climate change issue is going, and they're like,
we have no problem sourcing peppers.
Speaker 4 (39:55):
We're doing great.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
They started producing their own saracha and some ball and
garlic chili paste in twenty twenty three, which I think
is very funny. Yes, you can buy that at Underwood
Ranches dot com if you so choose to, And yeah,
(40:24):
it would not.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
End of the day.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
It really wouldn't surprise me if Hoifang Foods was having
so much trouble sourcing peppers because farmers are unwilling to
work with them.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
Yeah, makes sense.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
I feel like after watching all that go down, I
would also be reticent.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
I will say also, a thing that I've seen happen
in the fallout of all of this is that a
lot of people are like, you can make your own sarachias.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
Not that hard. I have not tried it. I know
neither here nor there, but I just know I have
seen a lot of articles like thank you.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
Yeah, there's certainly a lot of articles out there that
are that are like, out of siracha, here's substitutions for you.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
Go for it.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
Yeah, I'm definitely using I have like half a bottle left,
and I use it so sparingly, quite hilarious.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
I think I think I have like a local supermarket
brand at this point, which I did before I knew
all of this, Although yeah, I think right that is
probably what I shall continue doing.
Speaker 3 (41:43):
Well, what drama to visit in this revisit.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
Yeah, yeah, thank you all for coming with me and
my gossip bender.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
Oh thank you and yes listeners.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
If you have any information about the thoughts about this
recipes brands, please let us know. You can email us
at hello at sapod dot com, and we are also.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
On social media. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram at saver pod and we do hope to
hear from you.
Speaker 4 (42:22):
Savor is production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or.
Speaker 4 (42:28):
Wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
Thanks as always to our superproducers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard.
Thanks to you for listening, and we hope that lots
more good things are coming your way
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Dylan Fagan
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
Popular Podcasts
1. The Podium
The Podium: An NBC Olympic and Paralympic podcast. Join us for insider coverage during the intense competition at the 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games. In the run-up to the Opening Ceremony, we’ll bring you deep into the stories and events that have you know and those you'll be hard-pressed to forget.
2. In The Village
In The Village will take you into the most exclusive areas of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games to explore the daily life of athletes, complete with all the funny, mundane and unexpected things you learn off the field of play. Join Elizabeth Beisel as she sits down with Olympians each day in Paris.
3. iHeartOlympics: The Latest
Listen to the latest news from the 2024 Olympics.