America’s love for spicy food and mouth-tingling sauces has surged, but are we approaching “peak heat”?
Takis doesn’t think so, as it searches for a “Chief Intensity Officer.”
Some intense news for spice-loving job seekers: Takis, the popular corn tortilla chip brand, launched a public hunt last week for its first-ever “Chief Intensity Officer,” a paid brand ambassador role targeting content creators with a unique competition format that involves public voting and live judging for a $30,000 winning prize.
The job ad — that is, of course, really a marketing campaign — is emblematic of a country that no longer settles for mild. For some time now, America has been quite happily setting its mouth on fire, embracing heat in almost anything edible, with chilis and spice making their way into everything from mac ‘n’ cheese to sandwiches, lemonade to ice cream.
Condimentary
Perhaps in part because of a new generation of spice ninjas who carry their own mini Tabasco bottles and sriracha key chains, chili sauce is outgrowing its condiment peers. Indeed, it was the only one to grow in retail volume from 2019 to 2024 in the US among data provider Euromonitor’s list of sauce categories, squeezing up 13% while more traditional accompaniments like BBQ sauce, mayonnaise, ketchup, and soy sauce all saw their volumes drop.
For restaurants and packaged food companies battling rising food costs, spice has become a relatively cheap and effective way to get restaurant-goers’ attention and mark up menu prices. Snack makers like Frito-Lay were early to the trend, with its “Flamin’ Hot” flavoring first created in 1989 — which now occupies the No. 1 spot in spicy salty snacks, generating more than $3 billion in retail sales a year.
Turning up the heat
America’s melting pot of cultures has also seen its collective palette expand, with influences from Latin, Asian, and African cuisine bringing up the collective spice tolerance of the nation. That’s particularly true in younger people, with 51% of Gen Z in a 2024 survey considering themselves “hot sauce connoisseurs.” A whopping 35% have even signed a waiver (like this?) before eating something spicy. The soaring success of shows like “Hot Ones,” which invites celebrities to eat progressively hotter hot wings, have only poured fuel on the spicy fire.
As such, trends during the pandemic appeared to accelerate the spicy trend, though growth has calmed down ever since. Menu data from Datassential provided to Sherwood News reveals that 95.5% of some 4,861 restaurants surveyed offered at least one spicy menu item in the second quarter of 2025, more than the number of restaurants that offered chicken (95.1%).
However, the share of menu items with the word “spicy” has stayed relatively flat since 2023, at ~9% as of Q2 2025, suggesting that we may have hit a bit of a spice plateau.
That said, Google data suggests that when it comes to searching for a mouth-tingling meal, America’s appetite is still growing: searches for “spicy food” are at their all-time high.
Which is the spiciest state?
At the state level, data from grocery delivery platform Instacart found that New Mexico was America’s hot sauce capital — with residents there ordering 31.9 ounces of the stuff between October 2023 and September 2024, followed by, perhaps ironically, Alaska, where residents eager to warm up ordered 29.2 ounces per customer.
Bottom of the spice list, per Instacart? Alabama.
