Crowdsaucing
Spice lovers might have to fork out if they don’t want to suffer through more bland meals, as the ongoing shortage of sriracha hot sauce has driven resale prices to eye-watering levels — with the iconic red-and-green bottles going for as much as $70 on eBay and $124 on Amazon.
Huy Fong Foods, which retails the rooster-adorned variety of sriracha sauce, released a statement back in April 2022 detailing how poor weather conditions were causing a “severe shortage of chili”. Since then, Huy Fong has faced another year of production issues as pepper paucities have worsened: heatwaves have caused major droughts in the main areas (Mexico, California, and New Mexico) where Sriracha grows the 100 million pounds of chili peppers it requires to reach an annual ~20 million bottle demand.
And, since Huy Fong reported that they have “no estimations of when supply will increase”, hot-heads across the nation are feeling the pinch: there have even been reports of customers stealing bottles from local restaurants.
Piquant performance
While the price of sauces and gravies in general has increased dramatically in recent years — at the end of Q1 2023, the consumer price index for sauces and gravies was up 41% from 2017 — there is a special place in America’s heart for sriracha, with 40 states preferring the hot sauce to good old-fashioned ketchup.
It seems that, despite the ongoing shortage, there is no substitute for the Thai-derived sauce: Google Search data since 2013 shows that Americans consistently seek sriracha over other alternatives. Interestingly, Google searches for “sriracha” increased in mid-2022, after Huy Fong’s statement release, and peaked this month — clearly, reports of fiery bidding wars aren’t enough to stop sriracha being hot property.
