The Huy Fong Supply Chain Disaster

I am fascinated by the utter failure of Huy Fong, maker of the original Sriracha sauce in the U.S., as well as other delicious Asian hot sauces, to fail for the second straight year to acquire the chiles it needs. This is so weird to me. Yes, yes, a burning planet is not good for chiles. But there’s no other major brand of hot sauce that has this problem. And it’s not like Huy Fong uses some rare chile–it’s just jalapeños.

Huy Fong said in its statement that “limited production has recently resumed” but because the company does not sell directly to consumers, “we cannot determine when the product will hit shelves again.”

The shortage doesn’t seem to extend to other hot sauce producers.

“We have contracts with small New England farmers where we buy our products,” said Gabe DiSaverio, the founder of Spicy Shark, a craft maker of hot sauces. “I haven’t seen problems there. I’ve seen a pretty stable inventory of really all peppers.”

Mr. DiSaverio speculated that the shortage of Huy Fong’s sriracha could be attributed to a problem with its suppliers. Huy Fong Foods did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Tabasco, which uses red jalapeños from the United States and Latin America, is not experiencing any shortages either, though the company acknowledged that last year’s poor weather had an impact on the industry. The company says it has scaled up production and started srirachashortage.com to meet a surge in demand.

Makers of hot sauce also emphasize that sriracha is a type of sauce rather than a spice or a pepper. Since so many people equate Huy Fong with sriracha, it may seem as if there’s a worldwide shortage of the sauce. There’s not.

“People hear ‘shortage’ and people think there’s a sriracha pepper — there isn’t,” said George Milton, a co-founder of Yellowbird, another hot sauce maker. Since the shortage of Huy Fong sriracha has been back in the news, he said, he has seen an uptick in sriracha orders, including from restaurants that may not display the bottles on their tables.

Mr. Milton also said he had not been affected by any shortage of raw materials. “Growing seasons have been getting weirder and weirder every year,” he said, adding that he has had to rely on multiple suppliers to get his ingredients in the past.

I’m not really sure what the problem is, but I suspect it is relying on too few chile growers. It’s a pretty big colossal failure. I guess the only upside is that there are so many good hot sauces out there these days, including the Yellowbird sauces mentioned above.