The company is named for a 400' Taiwanese-owned Panama registered freighter, Huey Fong, that carried the founder, David Tran, and 3,317 other refugees out of Vietnam in December 1978. 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.
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 It was originally made with Serrano peppers and is now made with red Jalapeño peppers, reducing the overall pungency.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 and the rooster logo. One nickname for the product is "rooster sauce”, for the logo on the bottles. 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.
In 1987, Huy Fong Foods relocated to a building in Rosemead, California that once housed toymaker Wham-O. In 2010, the company opened a factory in Irwindale, California on 23 acres, a facility having of office space, of production space, and of warehouse space, 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. 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, whose proprietor, Craig Underwood, also oversees Underwood Family Farms. 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. 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". The company has never advertised its products, relying instead on word of mouth. 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. As of 2012 it had grown to sales of more than US$60 million a year. The company has warned customers about counterfeit versions of its sauces.
Awards and recognition
In December 2009, Bon Appétit magazine named its Sriracha sauce Ingredient of the Year for 2010.
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. Initially, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge refused the city's bid to shut down the factory 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. Irwindale dropped the lawsuit on May 29, 2014, after intervention by the office of Governor Jerry Brown.
