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Sriracha hit revenue of $150M a year with no sales team or ad spend
- na85 5y agoProof that, despite what certain well-known HN users will so vociferously swear, advertising is not essential to the modern economy.
- redis_mlc 5y agoIt's not proof, it's an exception. Also, Sriracha can be litigious: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/05/sriracha-maker-loses-lawsuit-to-its-former-jalapeno-grower.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/05/sriracha-maker-loses-lawsuit...
- thaumasiotes 5y ago> Also, Sriracha can be litigious Not in the context here - that's not a suit over IP. The basis of the suit is "we overpaid you by $1.4 million, and you refused to return our money". There is nothing strange or even questionable about such a suit, nor is there any reason to view it as an indicator of undesirable practices.
- modeless 5y ago> There is nothing strange or even questionable about such a suit When the final result is an award of $14 million against them plus $10 million in punitive damages, by unanimous jury verdict, it is absolutely questionable and potentially an indicator of undesirable practices.
- contravariant 5y agoGuess this goes to show how much trust the U.S. has in its own legislative system.
- gradschoolfail 5y agoAssuaging FOMO is a need, that is, essential to the sanity of advertisers, and indirectly, investors. I don’t know if the sanity of some of the more well-fed people in the economy is essential to the economy…
- tpetry 5y agoThe sauce business started in the early 1980s, almost 40 years ago. A lot has changed in the last 40 years. You wouldn‘t even be able to replicate this today because of food health rules.
- shoto_io 5y agoHow do you derive such a conclusion with n = 1?
- hervature 5y agoIt is a proof by contradiction. Essential meaning any successful business necessarily needs ad spend. Here is an example proving that statement false.
- austhrow743 5y agoThis is very confusing. Is your definition of "the modern economy" one in which sauce is sold?
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y agoIs... there no sauce sold in your version of the modern economy?
- austhrow743 5y agoI don't have a strong concept of what "the modern economy" is and would only see myself using it within a context that makes it clear im comparing it to some non modern economy. Which I dont think would ever be sauce.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y agoI think people here are using the term to describe the present-day economy. In that sense, fax machines and beepers aren't really part of the modern economy, but hot sauces very much are.
- Alupis 5y agoNot quite. Sriracha is probably the most marketed sauce in existence... just not advertised directly from the "original" manufacturer. Fast food chains, chip companies, beef jerky, almonds, other seasonings and more all spend a considerable amount advertising their products include Sriracha. Sriracha's popularity mostly began when these companies started to introduce products with it to everyday people. It's not like Sriracha didn't exist prior to 2010... I would be surprised if Huy Fong Foods, the company behind the popular US variation, didn't have something to do with the initial deals that got all this going. Clever marketing, indeed.
- rapind 5y agoTo a marketer everything is marketing. Make a good product? Clearly that’s marketing… I wonder how much they spent on not spending? /s
- moftz 5y agoSriracha isn't trademarked in any way. Anyone can make it and sell it in a similar bottle. Unless some restaurant specifically mentions Huy Fong or shows the rooster logo, the sriracha they are using is probably a generic version made from garlic and chilis.
- sremani 5y agoTry imitating exception to rules at your own peril.
- dalbasal 5y agoThat's quite a stretch. Existence proof for a particular isn't hard to come by. Lots of companies (including google & facebook, ironically) blew up without sales or marketing playing a significant role. The "modern economy" OTOH, is big. Advertising (either selling or buying) a core piece of the business model of many of the largest companies. Everything that touches them touches advertising and everything that touches them is a massive part of the economy. This might suggest that advertising needn't be essential, not that it isn't. Wikipedia & Linux might suggest that IP and shareholders needn't be necessary to the modern economy. But IP and shareholders certainly are, currently, necessary to the way it works.
- killingtime74 5y agoYou realise marketing and advertising are two different concepts right
- JohnWhigham 5y agoI don't have a problem with "dumb" advertising. It's when a profile is kept on me that a line is crossed.
- csunbird 5y agoAdvertising is essential, you need people to know about your product somehow. People will not buy something they do not know, especially when there is competition. The methods that are in use in current times on the other hand...
- na85 5y ago>Advertising is essential, you need people to know about your product somehow. TFA explicitly contradicts your opinion.
- modeless 5y ago"No trademark" is misleading. They have trademarks. Without them I expect exact clones would take their sales. The bottle and logo are quite distinctive and trademarked. The thing they didn't trademark is the name Sriracha.
- mcjiggerlog 5y agoIn the thread: > 9/ Interestingly, Tran never trademarked "Sriracha" (he did trademark the green cap and rooster, though).
- patchtopic 5y agoperhaps because it is the name of the style of Thai chili sauce he is making, named after the Thai town.
- nemetroid 5y agoThe thread is fine, but the HN headline is editorialized in a misleading way.
- spoonjim 5y ago"Sriracha" couldn't be trademarked because it is the name of the sauce. It's like someone trying to trademark "Kansas City style Barbeque Sauce" -- can't be done.
- plank_time 5y agoThat’s if you’re happy with only 150M/yr. Thats not going to make a regular VC satisfied.
- reducesuffering 5y agoThat's a $3b company at today's typical P/S ratio valuations. I'm sure most VC's are satisfied with finding a $3b bagger.
- plank_time 5y ago20x revenues? It’s not growing 100% YoY, so there’s no way it’s even 10x revenues.
- sdenton4 5y agoYou know what will really satisfy a VC, though? A delicious bahn-mi with a side of fries and a small bucket of Sriracha.
- aix1 5y agoPeople eat fries with bahn mi?!?!?
- peteretep 5y agoWhat kind of monster doesn’t like fries?
- thehappypm 5y agoApparently, a sandwich with a side of fries is not cool.
- sdenton4 5y agoWell, I was specifically thinking of this place which, while not the most authentic, also has some amazing Sriracha-bottle patterned wallpaper. (...and great fries...) https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bun+Mee/@37.788165,-122.4339542,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m8!1e2!3m6!1sAF1QipOtV9F8ntrbyXcQI5wprHSnu3YY5PJjxjhdOWm8!2e10!3e12!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipOtV9F8ntrbyXcQI5wprHSnu3YY5PJjxjhdOWm8%3Dw115-h86-k-no!7i4096!8i3040!4m12!1m6!3m5!1s0x8085873bf823e3e3:0x2c2a800cdea3ad6d!2sCafe+Bunn+Mi!8m2!3d37.7828663!4d-122.4637383!3m4!1s0x808580c7bec80081:0xb929400e5d001459!8m2!3d37.788165!4d-122.4339542 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bun+Mee/@37.788165,-122.43...
- mft_ 5y agoThought experiment: what sales level might it have hit with a sales team and a marketing budget?
- tomcooks 5y agoLess than what they currently hit because of the underdog/indie take.
- blobbers 5y agoProduct trumps marketing. Justice in the hot sauce industry!
- parineum 5y agoSriracha is really interesting to me. I don't know when exactly it became what it is today but I remember always getting it at the takeout Chinese places in the late 90s, referring to it as rooster sauce (occasionally cock sauce, for those excessively juvenile times). Everyone I knew already knew what it was and nearly everyone liked it but, for reasons completely unknown to me, one day it made it's way out of those cheap Chinese restaurants and into the mainstream. It's still a mystery to me. The only explanation I really have is that I grew up in the LA metro area and, I'm pretty sure, it's manufactured there. Perhaps it was ubiquitous locally and the popularity has to do with them expanding their footprint.
- inafewwords 5y agoLikely had to do with the size of their manufacturing getting huge. Make sauce seasonally and then find places to put it. Since they sell it to distributors, those distributors suddenly had extra product to unload. For awhile during its rise in popularity rooster sauce bottles could only be bought from Asian restaurants in my area and not regular grocery stores
- parineum 5y ago>For awhile during its rise in popularity rooster sauce bottles could only be bought from Asian restaurants in my area and not regular grocery stores I knew people who stole it from restaurants because that's the only place they could find it (and not for sale). It was probably available in Asian markets but a bunch of high school kids wouldn't have known that. It really is a marvel of word of mouth but it took decades for what I have to imagine would have taken much less time without sacrificing the quality of the product had they made an effort to spread the word. It just seems like they didn't want to but then I find it strange that they expanded manufacturing so much. That seems at odds.
- 5y ago
- watertom 5y agoOf course it’s impossible to know what their sales would look like if they had a sales team, and tons of money spent on ads. 2X, 5X, 10X, 20X? As long as the founders and investors, are happy with their current sales numbers.
- 411111111111111 5y agoA reduction is also possible, because currently it's profiting from word of mouth marketing which is increased by the psychological effect of it being a "secret tip that few know". I don't think marketing budgets will significantly improve sales on saturated markets like sauces. Especially if it's currently an unknown producer. That's probably going to change once their name is established however.
- asah 5y agoExample: beyond meat is only 12 years old. That said, I'm not sure sales would be much higher, so much as having achieved them sooner.
- srmarm 5y agoYeah, for such a globally known brand that is so widely available and used £150m seems like quite a small sales figure. Of course as a company with such humble beginnings and simple structure it's a great figure.
- thehappypm 5y agoWell, it's hard to say. McCormick's (who own a ton of sauces, like Frank's RedHot and Cholula) has a revenue of ~$6B. If Sriracha was the cornerstone of a more traditional condiment company, perhaps they could grow through marketing, and M&A to about that size.
- Danieru 5y agoNo comments yet pointing out what I think is the important point: Siracha is the established brand. If anyone wants to compete with Siracha they would be best served by using marketing. That Siracha gets to skip spending on marketing after having developed a green field market just speaks to their competitive moat. They produce a high quality product at reasonable prices, if anything there isn't room to compete if not on marketing.
- jollybean 5y agoThey've developed channel power, probably not on the same level as Coke, but something like that. Once you have your place 'in the system' etc. you have incredible leverage. The chocolate bars at my convenience store are the same, boring 20 variations for my entire life. They are not 'the best products' - they are just the products that will work through the system. It'd take a decade of consumer awareness to put something on par with 'Coffee Crisp' and then you have to get all of the gears of distribution to go along with it. So what we end up up with in chocolate - and any number of other goods - is kind of a 'channel equilibrium' where products establish channel dominance (which requires scale), and then inch forward ever so slightly. To see a 'new' product get to that level ... take a look at 'Swiffer' (cleaner) - basically, that's an institutional effort by P&G to 'disrupt' their own categories a bit and they've spent zillions marketing that. It's a trivial little thing, not much in the way of innovation, but when were talking consumer products at that scale, it never was about 'innovation'. These companies do buy brands and scale them but even then brands meet their limit. 'Ben and Jerries' they can probably 10-50x in size ... but at that price point they can only go so far with the category. Odwalla ... sadly had to shut down.
- noduerme 5y agoThis makes me think about the explosion in ice cream startups in the 2010s (the second time it happened after the 1980s). Ice cream is particularly hard to distribute but several companies made the cut and found themselves in nationwide supermarket aisles. I think there's always a consumer appetite to try the next new thing. I don't buy the idea that there's a moat around any of it.
- 5y ago
- LordAtlas 5y agoAnd despite it not tasting like the original Thai Sriracha sauce. Edit: the Thai version is thinner, tangier and a toucher sweeter, and made from spur chillies, not jalapeños. [1] [2] [3] [1] https://shesimmers.com/2010/03/homemade-sriracha-how-to-make-authentic.html https://shesimmers.com/2010/03/homemade-sriracha-how-to-make... [2] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/01/16/681944292/in-home-of-original-sriracha-sauce-thais-say-rooster-brand-is-nothing-to-crow-ab https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/01/16/681944292/in... [3] https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/what-is-sriracha-sauce https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/what-is-sriracha-sauce Not saying the Tran sauce is bad; just different.
- rplnt 5y agoIs the sauce that I get in every Asian restaurant not the same Sriracha? edit: clicked on the link, it seems to be that one, I think?
- dafelst 5y agoSri Racha is a town in Thailand, Sriracha sauce is named after that town and is ostensibly an attempt to replicate the sauce that originated from there - apparently it misses the mark a bit in terms of authenticity, but obviously it is still pretty great.
- Alupis 5y agoThe popular Huy Fong Foods product (green cap, roster on bottle) uses red jalapenos as it's primary pepper. Of course jalapenos are grown in Thailand today, but I'd wager the original sauce used a different, more local pepper.
- nwallin 5y ago> Of course jalapenos are grown in Thailand today, but I'd wager the original sauce used a different, more local pepper. The entire genus of capsicums are new world plants, and would have been unknown prior to the Columbian exchange. The family includes tomatoes, potatoes and bell peppers, which are all native to South America. There is no "local" pepper in Thailand- all of it was imported. edit: there's black pepper and long pepper, but that's... not the same thing.
- CalRobert 5y agoTragically, I stopped being able to get this sauce a couple years ago when the EU blocked imports due to one of the ingredients (I'm struggling to find a source atm though). It was magic! It made Irish cuisine bearable. The alternatives - Flying Goose, etc. are oversweet, underspiced, and dreadful.
- Deradon 5y agoHere in Germany I can still get it in almost every supermarket. So I don't know if it is the EU blocking imports.
- sakarisson 5y agoSame in Finland, which is known for being very by the book when it comes to EU regulations.
- Milner08 5y agoYou're probably seeing Flying Goose brand, which is very similar in appearance (bottle, etc) but not the same taste.
- sakarisson 5y agoGood guess! I checked in my fridge, and it does indeed have a flying goose logo.
- CalRobert 5y agoIt seems to be a recent change: https://newsbeezer.com/swedeneng/sriracha-sauce-can-no-longer-be-sold-in-sweden/ https://newsbeezer.com/swedeneng/sriracha-sauce-can-no-longe...
- bzzzt 5y agoIs it the original from Huy Fong though? In the Netherlands there are a few different variants of the sauce for sale, but the original is only sold through smaller shops. I like this one, packaging looks almost the same: https://static.ah.nl/static/product/AHI_43545239353338303138_3_LowRes_JPG.JPG?options=399,q85 https://static.ah.nl/static/product/AHI_43545239353338303138...
- Ndymium 5y agoInterestingly, the Huy Fong version of sriracha is no longer available in Finland due to it containing certain sulfites that are not allowed in spice sauces.[1] There are several competing sauces available, though. I remember wondering why it had disappeared from the shelves and only finding this one news article about it. [1] https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-11251204 https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-11251204 (in Finnish)
- killingtime74 5y agoSulfites give me head aches
- midjji 5y agoWell its just tasty...
- Tade0 5y agoI first heard about Sriracha years ago through Matthew Inman, a.k.a. The Oatmeal. Then Exploding Kittens happened and while (to my knowledge) it doesn't feature the condiment, I'm sure many people checked out the rest of the artist's work. Now that Sriracha made its way to Poland I finally managed to get a taste. It's spicy enough to not be offensive to the average consumer, but I think The Oatmeal oversold it on its palate-burning capabilities.
- asah 5y agoHaha, tastes have changed since the Oatmeal cartoon - at the time, it was one of the hottest sauces available in much of the US.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y agoI agree. It isn’t that hot, but it is a lot hotter than many. Personally, I like hot that tastes good. Many hot sauces are pure hot. They taste like crap; only selling Scoville. I like habañero, because it has decent (and unique) flavor. I think that they may have developed a less hot variation, because I’m seeing a lot of habañero-based stuff in regular consumer space.
- pizza 5y agoTry akabanga (Rwandan hot sauce). Comes in little eyedropper bottles, 150000+ scovilles, plus it's delicious and also since it's an oil-based sauce the heat doesn't linger that long in your mouth.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> I think that they may have developed a less hot variation, because I’m seeing a lot more habañero-based stuff in regular consumer space. You can vary the heat by how much rib you keep in, without effecting other flavor elements notably (the heat is mostly in the rib, the rest of the flavor is mostly in the flesh), and, because flavor is often nonlinear and affected by what else is included, you can also often reduce how much of the main pepper you use to vary heat while retaining other flavors. Or, if you are trading on the name and not the actual flavor, you can just ise less of the named pepper and still trade on the name, which is fairly common.
- gbtw 5y agoI wish they used a more hygienic bottle, the thing always leaks its disgusting.
- 11235813213455 5y agoand more importantly, it's plastics. We should all avoid plastics as much as possible nowadays (e.g. shower soap plastic bottles → soap bars)
- _ph_ 5y agoYes, someone should make a glass squeezing bottle :) Considering one bottle usually lasts a long time, I can live with plastic much more than for many other things which you use up way faster. At least the bottle is large and robust enough that it gets recycled as a whole and less likely to end up as micro plastic.
- busymom0 5y ago> Considering one bottle usually lasts a long time Really? I go through the bottle once every 1-1.5 weeks. But I do use it a ton.
- _ph_ 5y agoFor me, a bottle lasts several months.
- dragonwriter 5y agoThey seem to have bottle sizes from 9 oz to 8.5lb, so, you know, “one bottle” may be a somewhat ambiguous unit of measure.
- 11235813213455 5y ago> "recycling": plastic recycling is no magic, in the best case, in specialized plants, it'll still use a lot of energy, resources (water), emit gases and waste, and use polluting transports. In worst case it goes in landfills, and microplastics issue like you said https://www.breakfreefromplastic.org/2018/08/20/recyclable-is-a-word-not-a-promise/ https://www.breakfreefromplastic.org/2018/08/20/recyclable-i.... So the best is to reduce our consumption/demand of plastics > "Last a long time" for its single use (that bottle can't easily be reused), is relative, and multiplied by the number of sales, it looks terrible You can always buy chilli peppers, and more raw ingredients, in environmental-friendly wrapping, reusable wrappings or no wrapping at all (works for fruits/vegetables) Glass isn't recycled efficiently as well, what I'm more trying to say is we can simply adapt our lifestyle, instead of buying processed products like these, or say soda bottles, let's rather get more raw ingredients, with much better nutritional and health values, for us and the planet
- forgingahead 5y ago"No sales team" is a ridiculous summary. The full quote: "No sales team (Tran has mostly maintained the same 10 distributors and wholesale pricing from the 80s)" "10 distributors" is the sales team. Just because the distributors (who are large and who have probably hundreds if not thousands of their own sales staff) are doing the sales doesn't mean there isn't the process of a human being either calling or visiting stores to get them to buy the product. In other words, sales. Getting a product to market is hard, and a large part of that difficulty is DISTRIBUTION. If a company can find some good partners like distributors to handle that, good for them, but nobody can make any amount of meaningful revenue without sales, despite fake exhortations to the contrary.
- notahacker 5y agoYesh "no sales team" always makes me laugh when it turns out to actually mean "ten companies specialised in selling to retail outlets do our sales" (or in other cases "we give our sales team a different job title"). Channel sales is still sales.
- turkeywelder 5y agoIf anyone's in the sauce shipping game, try and get the Huy Fong one distributed in the UK. The market here is dominated by "flying goose" sriracha which is good, but not the same as the Huy Fong and there's a fair market for it here I think.
- cillian64 5y agoAccording to some Googling, the Huy Fong sauce isn’t available here any more because the preservative (E222) is no longer allowed in the UK
- timdaub 5y agoOh man. I'm so passionate about also building a product that is so good, they can't ignore you.
- failwhaleshark 5y agoGoddamn right. The cool magic is the different in the retail cost compared to the undeniable awesome experienced by people other than yourself. Make that difference as wide as possible and people will beat down your door for more. These days for food products, it seems damn important to have pricing either go insanely-low for bulk/budget (dollar store) or moderately-high for ultra-premium (WF, Costco, Sams).
- failwhaleshark 5y agoMisleading title. The best consumer products sell themselves with network effects of word-of-mouth. It can be very slow or very fast. If you wanted to launch a new sauce, I would give difficult-to-open-completely bottles to restaurants in major cities and say "We're trialing a new sauce that's ready for market. And we'd like to trial it exclusively at your [appropriately trendy for demographic] restaurant in XYZ, WQ. Can we ship it to the restaurant's address?"
- boomboomsubban 5y agoThe part that strikes me is that they still have the same 10 distributors since the 80's. The "local Chinese restaurant" is a much more franchised thing than most people are aware of, and those 10 distributors meant it already ended up throughout the country and allowed everyone to try it for free. This is likely the secret to it's success. The only similar product I can think of is Mountain Dew Baja Blast. Though it did get some advertising, by automatically being available in every Taco Bell it became a minor craze. It's not an easily reproducible concept though.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y agoI see it as a table condiment in many mainstream restaurants, these days.
- hhmc 5y ago>The "local Chinese restaurant" is a much more franchised thing than most people are aware of This is interesting (but also makes sense) -- do you happen to have an article?
- spoonjim 5y agoI don’t think the “franchise” is literal in terms of a royalty — it’s just that the vast majority of Chinese restaurants order their supplies from the same few distributors yielding largely similar results. It’s why you pretty much know what you’re getting when you go to a new Chinese restaurant in a way that you don’t at a new Italian restaurant.
- bencollier49 5y agoSame deal with Patak's sauces in Indian restaurants in the UK nowadays, unfortunately.
- sidlls 5y agoWe have those sauces in jars available on the shelf at my local grocer (Safeway, Bay Area, US). Bastardized or not, they are tasty.
- freddie_mercury 5y agoI live in SE Asia and I always have to roll my eyes when Americans ask for "real" sriracha. As if it were invented in the 1970s in California and the 100 year old Thai brand on the table is the cheap knock off of American culinary genius....
- toolslive 5y agoThey (Americans) do that all over the world. Examples I can think of from the top of my head as a EU citizen: - pizza pepperoni (Italy) - mayonaise (Belgium/France) - paella (Spain)
- toolslive 5y agoIt's also true the other way around: I am 100% sure that if I enter an Exotic restaurant in Belgium, that what I will get is something that has been "tweaked" to suite Belgian taste buds.
- oauea 5y agoYou're completely missing the point. You won't see many non-Americans go to another country, then demand the bastardized versions of local dishes.
- sidlls 5y agoAs an American who goes to restaurants in America in heavily tourist populated areas, I can assure you that you are hilariously wrong. Non-americans are not superior in any way to Americans in this regard (and many others).
- dagw 5y agoI take it you have never seen British or German tourists in Spain.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- goldcd 5y agoMy guess as to why it's successful is that it's always been moderately priced and Huy Fong is recognized as the originator of the "Americanized Sriracha" sauces. If a company tries to sell a cheaper version - then it feels like a cheap knock-off. And as everybody can afford to buy the original, why wouldn't you? If a company tried to sell a more expensive premium product in flashier packaging - then it would feel inauthentic. What are you paying more for? Plus whilst they've not paid for advertising, they've performed an excellent job of ensuring I'm aware of their history. I've no idea of the history of say Tabasco or Franks - but I've many times heard the history of this plucky little immigrant founded company (and this thread is just a continuation). Maybe the key is to just have a likable story - and let others tell it.
- dystroy 5y agoI don't think the likable story is key. Until recently, most of the many millions people buying the sauce didn't know anything about its origin. It was just the cheap sauce alone in its category that you could find everywhere.
- notahacker 5y agoAnd the irony is, the "you could find everywhere" bit is entirely down to the sales force he doesn't have (but his ten distribution partners do, and his Asian competitors didn't have in his target market for most of their existence) I've got two different blends of Sriracha sauce in my cupboard, both from Thai companies and one of them even copying Tran's bottle style, but it wouldn't have occurred to me until reading this article that a particular Vietnamese-American brand was supposed to be the "authentic" one. He could have got the origin story out there to people who don't watch documentaries about hot sauce if he'd spent money on advertising though...
- move-on-by 5y agoThis is the first I've heard that there is a story behind it. I've got a bottle of it in the fridge right now. Perhaps some advertising wouldn't hurt.
- varispeed 5y agoI wonder if a company that does not have such "overheads" like sales team, do pay floor employees significantly more than other companies and therefore it ends up getting more quality work done?
- cblconfederate 5y agoJust imagine if they had spent in ads
- dancemethis 5y agoAll thanks to Filthy Frank.
- martyvis 5y agoNo one has seemed to mention they were nearly shutdown in 2013 https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/02/27/283307892/sriracha-maker-given-more-time-to-contain-spicy-fumes https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/02/27/283307892...
- jrochkind1 5y agoIt's in the OP https://twitter.com/TrungTPhan/status/1409192747605446661 https://twitter.com/TrungTPhan/status/1409192747605446661
- dyeje 5y agoI like the sauce.
- ConcernedCoder 5y agoThe best part for me, is that since introducing Sriracha into my weekly ( if not daily ) diet, my acid reflux has dropped to zero...? unexplained benefit?
- grouphugs 5y agostinky factories, you should move next to one, it'll be funny
- diplodocusaur 5y agoLet's not ignore the addictive potential https://helix.northwestern.edu/blog/2014/07/your-brain-capsaicin https://helix.northwestern.edu/blog/2014/07/your-brain-capsa... Not sure how well established the research on it is. And there's also sugar.
- confiq 5y agowait... why nobody is talking about rick & morty TV show? Everyone should talking about it!
- x3n0ph3n3 5y agoszechuan != sriracha
- foolinaround 5y agothe insight i was able to take away from this is to consider the competitors as 'free advertising' for the product. I guess this works as long as one's brand is acknowledged as the de-facto product.
- verytrivial 5y agoI am a hot sauce tragic with more than a dozen bottles of various concoctions at my disposal. But confess to putting Sriracha on at least half of the things I think need some pep. All hail Sriracha! (My second place is Blair's Ultra Death which is amazing. I dole it out in pea-sized portion. I bought that bottle in .. oh my God ... 2014!!! Don't tell my mom.)
- hackermailman 5y agoNo ad spend but I see Sriracha shirts around often
- bszupnick 5y agoMaybe because of the "no trademark" addendum?
- bhy 5y agoThis reminds me a Chinese chili sauce brand called Lao Gan Ma. [1] The founder is a woman, who started the business as a road side shop selling hand made chili sauce. Now it sales more than half a billion dollars per year. They do not run advertisement too. The founder also insisted on some distinguished principles such as not taking any debt, not own supplier money, and not getting listed in stock market. The sauce is often named as a necessity for Chinese studying or working aboard. You can simply mix it with rice or noddles and have a delicious meal. If you like spicy Chinese food, you should give it a try. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lao_Gan_Ma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lao_Gan_Ma
- dmoy 5y agoHaa, I eat this stuff almost daily. I have four jars of it in my fridge. It's awesome. I don't know if I'd classify it as spicy, though my taste buds may also just be very dead.
- lazerpants 5y agoFunny enough, I can't stand Lao Gan Ma, there's a subtle taste to it that I find gross. I can't taste that flavor every time I use it, but if if I put it on dumplings it's there. However, I love some of the alternative versions. The best article I've seen on alternatives is below. I love Chile Crunch, I eat it on everything, it's a mash up of Asian and Mexican styles. https://www.epicurious.com/ingredients/the-best-chile-crisp-sauces-you-can-buy-online-article https://www.epicurious.com/ingredients/the-best-chile-crisp-...
- arugulum 5y agoI love Lao Gan Ma, but was devastated to learn that it has a non-trivial amount of trans fats in it (it's right on the nutrition label). Now I need to find an alternative.
- noodle 5y agoI'm a pretty big fan of Boon chili oil. It's similar but not the same, and comparatively much healthier.
- malkia 5y agoWould Geico be the opposite of all that? (E.g. not sure how many people actually get insured with Geico, but certainly most entertaining ads ever)
- chrisweekly 5y agoI was already a daily consumer of Sriracha before I saw the awesome 33m documentary film. Brand "loyalty" is, I think, the operative term. https://vimeo.com/ondemand/sriracha#_=_ https://vimeo.com/ondemand/sriracha#_=_
- peter_d_sherman 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sriracha_sauce_(Huy_Fong_Foods) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sriracha_sauce_(Huy_Fong_Foods... >"History David Tran began making chili sauces in 1975 in his native Vietnam, where his brother grew chili peppers on a farm north of Saigon.[5] In 1978, the new Communist Vietnamese government began to crack down on ethnic Chinese in south Vietnam. Tran and three thousand other refugees crowded onto the Taiwanese freighter Huey Fong, heading for Hong Kong. After a month-long standoff with the British authorities, its passengers disembarked on January 19, 1979.[16] Tran was granted asylum in the United States. He started Huy Fong Foods in 1980, naming the company after the refugee ship that brought him out of Vietnam. The sauce was initially supplied to Asian restaurants near his base in Chinatown, Los Angeles,[3] but sales grew steadily by word of mouth. In December 2009, Bon Appétit magazine named the sauce Ingredient of the Year for 2010.[17][18] In 2012, over 20 million bottles were sold.[3] Huy Fong Foods says demand has outpaced supply since the company started making the sauce. The company does not advertise because advertising would widen that gap. Huy Fong has boosted production since 2013.[19] Sriracha sauce has grown from a cult taste to one of the food industry's most popular condiments. It infuses burgers, sushi, snacks, candy, beverages, and even health products. Tran said he was dissuaded from securing a trademark on the word sriracha since it is difficult to obtain one named after a real-life location. This has allowed others to develop their own versions, using the name. Some of the biggest corporations in the business, such as Heinz, Starbucks, Frito-Lay, Applebee's, P.F. Chang's, Pizza Hut, Subway, and Jack in the Box use the name without licensing it.[8][20] In 2016, Lexus partnered with Huy Fong Foods to build a single promotional Sriracha IS sport sedan.[21]"
- taf2 5y agoI realize they may not advertise but they also sell through resellers... who at least from my google searching [1] do appear to advertise this product (delicious as it is) very heavily... [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=sriracha https://www.google.com/search?q=sriracha
- newguy886 5y agoThis is exactly the reason why I buy only his sirracha source. This guy got balls.
- mandeepj 5y agoNo need to invent an electric car or go to space. Just a sauce can also be a MM business.
- mattwad 5y agoIt's great on Asian cuisine, but I can't stand when I ask for hot sauce at a Mexican restaurant and they come out with this Asian-style sauce. It's not spicy at all, rather sweet.
- lifeisstillgood 5y ago>>> He filled recycled baby jars and sold product out of a Blue Chevy Van, making $2.3k the first month. Wow. In 1978 or so. That's around 10K first month in todays money.
- ChrisArchitect 5y agonot news. Stringing a bunch of content together from news posts from 2019 or older, like 2017 etc. (which have already been on here)
- johnwheeler 5y agoTalk about a wide moat! When you can forego trademarks and marketing, completely ignore the competition and still pull out a 150M and grow, you’ve got one hell of a business.