Huy Fong Foods

Huy Fong Foods is an American hot sauce company based in Irwindale, California.[1] Beginning in 1980 on Spring Street in Los Angeles's Chinatown, it has grown to become one of the leaders in the Asian hot sauce market, particularly in Sriracha sauce popularly referred to as rooster sauce due to the image of a rooster on the label.

Huy Fong Foods, Inc.
匯豐食品公司
Private
IndustryHot sauce
Founded1980 in Los Angeles
FounderDavid Tran
Headquarters
Irwindale, CA
,
United States
Key people
William Tran
President
Yassie Tran Holliday
Vice President
ProductsAsian-style hot sauce
OwnerTran family
Number of employees
200 (2011)
Websitewww.huyfong.com
Huy Fong Foods
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese匯豐食品公司
Simplified Chinese汇丰食品公司
Vietnamese name
Vietnamese alphabetCông ty Thực phẩm Hối Phong
Chữ Hán公司食品匯豐

Name and brand

The company is named for a 400' Taiwanese-owned Panama registered freighter, Huey Fong[2], that carried the founder, David Tran,[3] and 3,317 other refugees out of Vietnam in December 1978.[3] The rooster symbol that is a part of the Sriracha branding comes from the fact that Tran was born in the Year of the Rooster on the Chinese zodiac.[3][4][5]

Products

The company's most popular product is its sriracha sauce. It was originally made with Serrano peppers and is now made with red Jalapeño peppers, reducing the overall pungency. It is currently Huy Fong Foods' best-known and best-selling item, easily recognized by its bright red color and its packaging: a clear plastic bottle with a green cap, text in five languages (Vietnamese, English, Chinese, French, and Spanish) and the rooster logo. One nickname for the product is "rooster sauce”, for the logo on the bottles.[6] In contrast to similar hot sauces made by other manufacturers, Huy Fong's sriracha sauce does not contain fish extract, making it suitable for most vegetarians, although the presence of garlic may make it unsuitable for members of Buddhism and some Hindu denominations.

Huy Fong also makes sambal oelek and chili garlic sauces.[7]

History

Founding and staffing

Huy Fong Foods was founded by David Tran (born 1945), a Chinese-Vietnamese businessman of Teochew descent, and a former Major in the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam.[3] Tran fled the country in 1978 and arrived in the United States — first in Boston, then in Los Angeles — in the spring of 1980 as a part of the migration of the Vietnamese boat people following the Vietnam War.[5]

Huy Fong Foods is a family business, staffed by eight members of the family. David Tran's son, William Tran (born c. 1976), is the company's president; his daughter Yassie Tran-Holliday is vice-president.

Production
Huy Fong Foods Headquarters, Irwindale, California

In 1987, Huy Fong Foods relocated to a 68,000-square-foot (6,300 m2) building in Rosemead, California that once housed toymaker Wham-O.[6] In 2010, the company opened a factory in Irwindale, California on 23 acres, a facility having 26,000 square feet (2,400 m2) of office space, 150,000 square feet (14,000 m2) of production space, and 480,000 square feet (45,000 m2) of warehouse space,[8] which is now the site of manufacture of all three of the brands sauces. These sauces are produced on machinery that has been specially modified by David Tran, who taught himself machining and welding skills. Since 2014, the Irwindale factory has been open to visitors, and has become a tourist attraction.[6][9]

In Huy Fong Foods' production at these facilities, the company begins with purchase of chilis grown in Ventura, Los Angeles, and Kern counties and production of a mash from these; most of each year's chili mash is produced in just two months, during the autumn harvest. Earlier, the company used serrano chilis but found them difficult to harvest. The product made from the natural mash is processed such that the final product contains no artificial ingredients.

Specifically, until 2016, the sauces were made from a Ventura County red jalapeño mash made from chili peppers grown in Moorpark, California by Underwood Ranches,[10] whose proprietor, Craig Underwood, also oversees Underwood Family Farms.[11] Huy Fong Foods' relationship with Underwood and the Ranches ended in 2016 after—as alleged by a lawyer for Underwood—Huy Fong Foods' David Tran "attempted... to hire away Underwood’s COO in order to form a new chile-growing concern", which is described as breaking trust between the supplier and manufacturer.[12] After a failure by Underwood to return an overpayment in 2016, Huy Fong Foods' sued Underwood Ranches, who then "countersued for... breach of contract and later won".[12][13]

The company has never advertised its products, relying instead on word of mouth.[14] Production and sales of the sauces are sizeable; in 2001, the company was estimated to have sold 6,000 tons of chili products, with sales of approximately US$12 million. In 2010 the company produced 20 million bottles of sauce in a year.[8] As of 2012 it had grown to sales of more than US$60 million a year.[3]

The company has warned customers about counterfeit versions of its sauces.[15]

Awards and recognition

In December 2009, Bon Appétit magazine named its Sriracha sauce Ingredient of the Year for 2010.[16]

Community relations issues

The odor of chilis that emanates from the new Irwindale factory upset the community's residents and the City of Irwindale filed a lawsuit against Huy Fong Foods in October 2013, claiming that the odor was a public nuisance.[17] Initially, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge refused the city's bid to shut down the factory[18] but a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ordered the factory to essentially shut down on November 27, 2013, prohibiting all activities that could cause odors.[19] Irwindale dropped the lawsuit on May 29, 2014, after intervention by the office of Governor Jerry Brown.[20]

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References
  1. Contact Us, Huy Fong Foods, archived from the original on January 25, 2010, retrieved February 26, 2010.
  2. https://www.nytimes.com/1979/01/21/archives/first-refugees-from-freighter-land-in-hong-kong-193-children-come.html
  3. Shyong, Frank (April 12, 2013). "Sriracha Hot Sauce Purveyor Turns Up the Heat". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved July 28, 2019.
  4. Clemens, Randy (2011). The Sriracha Cookbook: 50 "Rooster Sauce" Recipes that Pack a Punch. Random House. p. 10.
  5. Edge, John T. (2009-05-19). "A Chili Sauce to Crow About". New York Times. Retrieved 2013-04-30.
  6. Once Secretive Sriracha Factory Becomes California's Hottest Tourist Attraction, Forbes, Sep 24, 2014
  7. "Huy Fong Foods - Products". Retrieved 12 April 2014.
  8. "Huy Fong Foods is moving to Irwindale". The Scene. Los Angeles: NBC.
  9. Blau, Christine (April 16, 2015). "Sriracha: Hot Sauce House Tour". National Geographic Traveler. Retrieved July 28, 2019.
  10. "Made in America". Huy Fong Foods, Inc. Archived from the original on 2017-01-24. Retrieved 2017-01-24.
  11. Díaz, Alexa (May 20, 2019). "Sriracha Maker's Legal Battle with Jalapeño Farm Heats Up". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved July 28, 2019.
  12. Nosowitz, Dan (July 23, 2019). "Sriracha And Its Pepper Farmer Are Mad At Each Other". Modern Farmer. Retrieved July 28, 2019.
  13. Kisken, Tom (April 18, 2019). "Sriracha partnership flames into Ventura County court battle; $20-plus million at stake". Ventura County Star. Retrieved 2019-04-18.
  14. BBC Staff. "Sriracha: How a Sauce Won Over the US". BBC News. Retrieved July 25, 2015.
  15. "Counterfeit.htm". Huy Fong Foods. September 14, 2004. Archived from the original on 2006-03-11. Retrieved 2017-01-24.
  16. "Best Foods of the Year". Conscious cook (World wide Web log). Bon Appétit. Dec 2009. Archived from the original on 2011-10-06. Retrieved 2011-12-03.
  17. Rogers, John (October 30, 2013). "City: Odor from Sriracha chili plant a nuisance". Associated Press. Archived from the original on October 31, 2013.
  18. "Sriracha lawsuit: Judge denies Calif. city's bid to close hot sauce plant", News, CBS.
  19. Shyong, Frank (27 November 2013). "Effect on Sriracha supply unclear after partial shutdown ordered". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 27 November 2013.
  20. Shyong, Frank (May 29, 2014). "Sriracha truce brokered with help of Gov. Jerry Brown's office". LA Times.

Further reading
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