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How the Sriracha guys screwed over their supplier

419 points by thunderbong 8mo ago

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
pprotas 8mo ago
Human greed knows no bounds
neya 8mo ago
I wish there was a wall of shame blacklist for CEOs who pull unethical shit off. With reviews and ratings from everyone around them. Kind of like yelp, but for CEOs. Then, anyone who wants to start a new venture or giving them any money, can then go look em up there before signing a contract with these trash CEOs. Right now, they only get away with all this because it all happens under the table and not enough people know.
- kvdveer 8mo ago
  I suppose court records can function as such a list. If you also want 'alledged assholery' on that list, the list will just turn into a list of CEOs, due to false reports.
  - neya 8mo ago
    It would be nice to aggregate all that and put it under a "profile". Kind of like facebook, but your entire profile feed is just the long list of court records, assholery and screw overs for other people. I actually saw a version that someone did for Jack (Twitter's ex founder) a few years ago and it was hilarious but cleverly informative. That's honestly where I got this idea from.
    - c22 8mo ago
      Why stop at CEOs?? If you implement this for everybody then I will know who to sell my used car to and who is an unworthy jerk!
  - fake-name 8mo ago
    > false reports. Are you sure they're false?
    - thaumasiotes 8mo ago
      Are we sure that some reports of every person are false? Of course we are.
  - hinkley 8mo ago
    Given the vast over representation of sociopathy and malignant narcissism in CEOs it’s going to be most CEOs even if you filter out false claims. But if you’re gonna hate someone it’s good if you have a real reason to do so instead of bullshit and rumors.
- vasco 8mo ago
  That only works for poor people because CEOs will sue immediately. Someone with a lot of money for legal insurance would have to run it.
  - neya 8mo ago
    Well, this kind of data actually exists. The key is to maintain anonymity. Glassdoor does it. You will see a lot of employees actually complain about management and seniors by name on there.
    - vasco 8mo ago
      Glassdoor, as big as it is, allows for deleting bad reviews.
- ReptileMan 8mo ago
  There is such wall. Usually published by Fortune.
- SilverElfin 8mo ago
  Not just CEOs, but we also need it for investors. For example when startups screw over employees on equity, the founders, board members, and their firms, should all be on a public blacklist.
  - NickC25 8mo ago
    Same goes for prospective investors, too! If someone is known to be a ghoster, a gaslighter, a bullshitter, or someone who isn't serious and wants to waste the time of founders, it should be known.
  - red-iron-pine 8mo ago
    ITT we recreate public filing rules
- oakmad 8mo ago
  Well there used to be fuckedcompany.com that served a similar purpose. Of course it was litigated into history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucked_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucked_Company
  - Barbing 8mo ago
    >The site was taken offline for two days in August 2002; Ford Motor Company law firm Howard Phillips & Andersen had threatened litigation against FC's upstream provider HostGator as a means of silencing a discussion of a series of layoffs entitled "Ford, where finding a job is job one." Ford claimed that it infringed a trademark slogan "Ford, where quality is job one," discontinued after widespread use from 1980 to 1997. The site eventually returned minus the news of the Ford layoffs. Anybody remember that? How damaging were those threads to Ford, I wonder. Hurt executive pride the most?
  - CPLX 8mo ago
    FC wasn't litigated into history, it just had its moment and then passed and pud moved on to do other things.
  - neya 8mo ago
    That's an awesome domain name, tbh. Polite warning for anyone trying to Google the name. "Fucked company" results in porn listings (but I should have seen this coming tbh) :')
- socalgal2 8mo ago
  It won’t help. At my second job the president hired a VP with a white collar criminal record and told everyone not to bring it up
  - Ma8ee 8mo ago
    The POTUS is well known for screwing over contractors and lenders. It clearly didn't damage his reputation enough.
    - red-iron-pine 8mo ago
      arguably is the reason why his business kept failing. you can only screw over suppliers a couple of times before the word gets out and no one wants to do business with you. now they want the cash up front, and with sizable markups to CYA. a reasonable person would try to unfuck that perception; instead Trump double-down on the grift
    - mrguyorama 8mo ago
      The most insane part of that is all the generally "normal" businesses who signed contracts with him despite this well publicized history. People like law firms with long histories. Trump has always preferred dragging out a court battle to actually signing a small check for services rendered, and outright brags about it. He explicitly believes stiffing your contractors is what "Good business" means. Because he is a selfish child and getting stuff for free is his worldview. But utter morons still line up to get shafted. I just don't understand. I couldn't get a car loan because I have no credit history even though I had enough cash in the bank to buy the car yet people will still line up to suck the toe of someone with a known history of successfully screwing all their business partners. Same with how his administration is full of people who don't recognize he will happily throw them under the bus for any reason even though that's all he has done for the past decade. There is just a shocking inability for the common person to connect people to their history in the USA. The guy who started a trade war and caused prices to increase was voted in because prices were too high. The math don't math.
      - 8mo ago
- atoav 8mo ago
  I wish there would just be laws against this type of behaviour, but we all know who is in control of which laws are getting passed. So short of that social shaming will have to do. A CEO that treated humans and/or the planet like dirt, should for example be unable to go to a restaurant, a bar, a park, down a road, onto a beach without getting thrown out or ridiculed, heckled or just called out by others. Behave like scum? Get treated like scum. Fuck with the tribe? Get thrown out. It is one of the oldest correctives for shit behavior any society has ever used in the history of humanity. The problem is they have created a world in which they have too many spaces to avoid this type of consequences. Now of course within the rules of our society everyone should get a fair process. But these people are the ones who ignore and bend the rules the most and even have them rewritten. At some point when you play a game and you constantly have the other guy break the rules and bribe the referee to make ever more elaborate exceptions for them, at some point you just have to cancel the game and ensure it is never again played with that person on the field. They can watch from the sideline, but playing? Nope. Now this should not target the occasional ethically neutral or even ethically responsible CEO, but I am afraid by that point it will be hard to have people see that difference anymore. It will come crashing down one way or another.
- mellosouls 8mo ago
  As a bolshie type myself, very quick to moan at higher-ups, I think we need to be realistic that often we grunts don't have the big picture (especially the politics) and unfortunately that won't stop somebody lowdown move from merely internal letting off steam to anonymous public borderline slander. There is Glassdoor etc though for people who want to have their say; that all these platforms will be gamed and manipulated is a given.
  - salawat 8mo ago
    Nah, nah, nah. Let me help you there. You don't have the big picture because you either haven't asked, or it hasn't been shared with you. If you ask, and you still don't have it, it's being intentionally hidden, or the person doesn't know/can't articulate the connection. One of these is a problem for the org. The other is potentially structurally beneficial for the org, but a massive problem for you. Feel free to guess which is which. I leave it as an exercise to the student.
Mistletoe 8mo ago
Now I know to buy the Underwood brand sriracha. It looks like this: https://a.co/d/06NNRslo https://a.co/d/06NNRslo
- eeixlk 8mo ago
  Nothing against Underwood or Siracha in general, so buy what you want but $12 dollars per bottle is crazy, unless this is your favorite thing ever. So many other flavors to discover, and they wont be warehoused for months.
  - NitpickLawyer 8mo ago
    > $12 dollars per bottle is crazy Hot sauce is pretty easy to make if you're inclined to go that route. You only need a scale and a blender, and some basic kitchen skills. You get to explore a lot and control for flavour / heat with adding stuff to the mix. Plenty of good content on yt you can get inspiration from. It's also something you can make into a hobby. You can go as low effort as buying fresh peppers from a market when in season, or start growing yourself. Growing can be anywhere from extremely low maintenance (i.e. just water them from time to time and leave them on a window sill) or get into advanced stuff like pruning, soil ph, cross pollination and all that stuff. Some peppers are prolific growers, and you get fresh peppers, pepper paste, chili flakes and sauce from a potentially low effort hobby. And they make some nice gifts as well.
    - duttish 8mo ago
      I've tried getting started with this but my first attempt a habanero/mango sauce was _horrible_, must've used a slop recipe or something. Do you have a good base to recommend?
    - Barbing 8mo ago
      >leave them on a window sill Ooooh anybody have a rec for the most idiot-proof hot thing to try to grow?
      - 8mo ago
SilverElfin 8mo ago
Yep this was a very controversial thing when it happened. They tried to squeeze the farmer who supplied all their peppers from their earliest days - why would you do that unless you have no morality? And now the Huy Fong Sriracha tastes different, and Underwood’s own Sriracha is actually what tastes best. I’m glad to hear there was a happy ending to the epic greediness and underhanded tactics of Huy Fong: > Later, obviously, there's a lawsuit. Funnily enough, it wasn't actually Underwood who sued Huy Fong. It was Huy Fong who sued Underwood, seeking refunds for payments it had made earlier under their contracts. Underwood turned around and counterclaimed for breach of contract and fraud and a bunch of other shit. Underwood succeeded - there was a unanimous jury verdict in their favor - and got awarded about $13 million in compensatory damages, and another $10 million in punitive damages (these are only awarded where you've done something so outrageous that it's quasi-criminal; it's to deter other people from doing similar things).
- hinkley 8mo ago
  On the Reddit thread it was said that underwood hasn’t quite exactly nailed the, I guess viscosity because “consistency” has other connotations and if anything they seem to be more consistent. I love that they had to buy chilis on the open market because their supplier fired the customer. Mostly because I’ve hardly ever gotten to fire a customer. Even when they really should have.
  - thaumasiotes 8mo ago
    > I guess viscosity because “consistency” has other connotations and if anything they seem to be more consistent. You're thinking of two different words. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/consistency https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/consistency Sense 1: agreement of parts or features to one another or a whole Sense 2: degree of firmness, density, or viscosity Notably, sense 1 has a related adjective, consistent, and sense 2 does not.
    - ATMLOTTOBEER 8mo ago
      he knows. that's why he said viscosity. reread it slowly
walthamstow 8mo ago
I don't know what tariffs you guys have put on foreign sauces these days but the Flying Goose brand made in Thailand is the only brand that tastes right to me.
- julianz 8mo ago
  Flying Goose is good, my favourite is Ox brand. It's very punchy, heavy on the garlic.
- antonymoose 8mo ago
  If we’re talking alternatives, the Three Mountain Yellow Sriracha became our staple at home during the shortage. We still use red for a variety of sauces but rarely as a direct condiment.
  - zem 8mo ago
    this is my go to as well, I find the red one has a harsh taste to it
- ccozan 8mo ago
  I also never heard of Huy Fong until now. Flying Goose is the one that you find to buy in Europe. Also, very tasty!
- brettermeier 8mo ago
  Oh there's another Sriracha Sauce?
  - ChoGGi 8mo ago
    Sriracha sauce originates from Si Racha, Thailand. So yes, lots of them.
JacobAldridge 8mo ago
I remember when Sriracha disappeared from the market for a while (2022?). The story I heard at the time was heavily positive, talking up the handshakes and relationship angle - suggesting the supplier had a bad harvest (drought) so the manufacturer had decided not to produce sauce rather than produce an inferior product. Either rumours or more lies - and a good way to help the market forget the earlier flavour and be grateful for a sloppier solution to 'return'?
- the_biot 8mo ago
  Yeah, I remember the two parties accusing each other of essentially the same thing -- destroying a 25-year business relationship over short-term greed, for no good reason. It's good to see the result of the court case, now at least we know who tried to screw who over.
ErroneousBosh 8mo ago
I don't know why people like Sriracha anyway. It just tastes of "hot" and vinegar. There are far better hot sauces out there, available at your local Chinese, Pakistani, or Iranian supermarket.
- stuaxo 8mo ago
  It's just slightly spicey ketchup, pretty sweet. There are definitely better things out there.
  - tbyehl 8mo ago
    They have a spicy ketchup product that I liked, tho it has disappeared from my local stores. At the time I first noticed it at the store it was the hottest one that also matched the thick consistency I expect from ketchup.
  - thaumasiotes 8mo ago
    > It's just slightly spicey ketchup What does "ketchup" mean to you? I don't see how you can call it "ketchup" when it contains no tomatoes. In Indonesia the same word ["kecap"] would mean "soy sauce", but that is obviously also a completely unrelated product.
    - ErroneousBosh 8mo ago
      Ketchup only being made from tomatoes is a comparatively recent thing. In the UK in the 1500s or so the most common condiment was mushroom ketchup, which you pretty much have to make from scratch these days and that's a bit of a pity. You cook the mushrooms off with mace, nutmeg, ginger, pepper, maybe some tamarind (that's the stuff that gives Worcester sauce its sour flavour - it's got the same thing in it as sorrel which I guess you could also use but that's better for like a pesto), brown sugar, and some red wine, and just keep going until it reduces down into a thick sticky paste. It's quite a strong flavour, probably a bit full on for the average American palate, although I know people over there who make it and apparently enjoy it. Tomato ketchup is like a cross between a pickle and a jam, where (at least in theory) the sugar and vinegar act as preservatives and the pectin from the tomatoes makes it set up into a sticky jelly. People also made walnut ketchup, which is difficult to do where I am because you need green unripe walnuts and there aren't a lot of walnut trees here. If you live near a walnut grower see if you can get a bag of unripe ones and have a go at it. The unripe walnut juice will stain the hell out of everything it comes near - it'll stain Pyrex, ffs - but it's good stuff that goes nicely with a bit of venison.
netika 8mo ago
When I see a company this big screwing over their partner after 20 years of partnership for some lousy tens of millions of dollars (which is probably peanuts compared to worldwide profits), I immediately think that everything is not as simple as it seems. In this post, Underwood is obviously a virtuous, hard working victim and the sriracha guys are the villains. I don’t believe that there are good and bad companies and I firmly believe that there is some underlying reason for this situation.
- pbmonster 8mo ago
  The court awarded $10M in punitive damages in addition to the $13M in compensatory damages. So the options are basically "Huy Fong's lawyers are criminally incompetent" or "Huy Fong absolutely screwed over their supplier".
- dsr_ 8mo ago
  By way of contrast, I've seen so many corporations led by deranged idiots who used to make good decisions within their realm of competence that I have no trouble believing that Huy Fong decided that they could completely dominate Underwood, and were very wrong. The more power a person believes they have, the stupider they act. Quoth wikipedia: "The jury unanimously ruled in favor of Underwood on the grounds of breach of contract and fraud."
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
textembedding 8mo ago
This story and its retellings appear on Reddit's front page every two months like clockwork. https://www.reddit.com/search/?q=huy+fong https://www.reddit.com/search/?q=huy+fong Each time it gets retold, the sriracha cartoon villain's mustache grows longer and more twirled. Somehow, Underwood Ranches' competing product never gets failed to get mentioned in a top comment, along with all the places you can buy it, how much better/hotter it tastes, and how superior its ingredients are. I've never seen something so obviously and clumsily astroturfed, yet be so effective. Their entire growth strategy is enemy positioning on social media. You gotta hand it to the COO (who according to the story he's crafted is the loyal and virtuous hero) as he's running circles around the incompetent and out-of-touch management at sriricha who likely have no idea what's going on. It appears sheer spite and vengeance is what brought Underwood Ranches back from the brink of bankruptcy. Now that's a genuine American success story.
- IshKebab 8mo ago
  Uhm. What are you suggesting exactly? That Underwood somehow manipulated Huy Fong into screwing them over and then suing them, just so that they could get a good story out of it? Do you think it's fabricated? You can read the exact same thing in the court judgement. It's barely any longer than the reddit comment.
  - jakewins 8mo ago
    They are clearly suggesting that the story recurring every two months is Astro-turfed, not that the story itself is false?
    - functionmouse 8mo ago
      Here I was foolishly thinking AstroTurf meant false grass
      - stdbrouw 8mo ago
        Well, it implies that the "grassroots" element of it is fake, the message itself being false is optional.
squid_ca 8mo ago
Off-topic: After visiting a Reddit link via Hacker News on my phone, my Reddit layout is unusable. How do I get out of old Reddit and back to something usable? Related: why does HN always link to old.reddit?
- nxtbl 8mo ago
  Because the "new" layout is awful.
  - squid_ca 8mo ago
    Yes, I agree, but the old one is unusable on mobile, and visiting old.reddit.com forces me to keep using it until I logout and login again, which is also awful
- RankingMember 8mo ago
  The new layout is awful on desktop. Change "old" to "www" and you'll be all set on mobile.
  - squid_ca 8mo ago
    That doesn’t work, but that’s not your fault! I think it’s setting some cookie or something, which makes this annoying to deal with. Anyway, thanks for the reply
    - ChoGGi 8mo ago
      The option to change it is buried in the settings.
1tdimhcsb 8mo ago
[dead]
throw0101c 8mo ago
I think this Fortune story has a decent timeline of events and explains the perspective of both sides: > At first, Underwood recalls, he was confused and hurt. “We were trying to figure out what the hell’s going on,” he tells me when I visit his offices in Camarillo, Calif., in December. “Because we were really vulnerable, both in the percentage of our business that he commanded—and I guess our belief that we were going to have a long-term relationship.” But he soon became convinced, Underwood tells me, that Tran’s intentions were bad, and had been for some time. “Basically, he really was out to destroy me,” he says. “He didn’t give a damn about me or our family or all that we’d done together.” > Over at Huy Fong, feelings were similarly raw. Tran felt betrayed, and blindsided by accusations that he had been underhanded. For most of three decades, he had remained loyal to Underwood as his only pepper producer, and each year he had handed over millions on the promise of a harvest, a gesture that he saw as an act of faith. Now all that trust had collapsed in a petty argument over money. > Tran has come to believe that Underwood was trying to drive him to bankruptcy, then steal his sauce business. “I helped him because he grew chili for me,” he says. “He made money, he owned land. But it is not enough. He wanted to take over my business.” It felt like being “stabbed in the back,” adds Donna Lam, Tran’s sister-in-law and executive operations officer. * https://archive.is/https://fortune.com/2024/01/30/sriracha-shortage-huy-fong-foods-tabasco-underwood-ranches/ https://archive.is/https://fortune.com/2024/01/30/sriracha-s...
- theamk 8mo ago
  That story actually pretty bad.. Court findings are pretty clear on this [0]: > When Roberts arrived, Tran told him that he was forming a new company. Lam was going to operate the company. Tran told Roberts that Roberts would be working for the new company. > When Roberts declined the job offer, Tran was not happy. Tran told Roberts that Underwood would have to deliver peppers for $500 per ton to compete with Chinese pepper mash that sold for $300 per ton. [...] Underwood was suddenly facing imminent catastrophic financial consequences. It could not grow peppers for $500 a ton. Its costs averaged $610 a ton. [...] Tran refused to provide Underwood with prepayments needed to finance the crop. Tran also insisted that Underwood contract with Chilico rather than Huy Fong. OK, 8 days after agreeing on contract (!), the Huy Fong man tried to hire away Underwood's COO (Roberts), pushes hard for price below cost, refuses to provide money for planting, and tries to offload responsibility to a shell company. This sounds about as evil as it gets, and Underwood was right to refuse. And what does the journalist say about this? "He wanted to take over my business"? "It felt like being "stabbed in the back""? I am sorry, I think that story author was fed some BS by Tran, and did not bother to verify it. (Alternatively, maybe Tran has a explanation that makes sense for him... I'd like to hear the thoughts of someone who walks back on contract few days after it's made, and how they justify it to themselves - but sadly that fortune story does not have this) [0] https://cases.justia.com/california/court-of-appeal/2021-b303096.pdf?ts=1627407095 https://cases.justia.com/california/court-of-appeal/2021-b30...
andyferris 8mo ago
I don’t understand the sriracha “thing” in North America. Don’t you guys have 100’s of sambal oleks from SE Asia to choose from?
- InUrNetz 8mo ago
  We can buy it, but its not common. Sriracha is in most restaurants, I keep a bottle in my fridge, it's in every grocery store, etc.
- mauvehaus 8mo ago
  In short: no. I’m sure that in the Boston area we’d have had no trouble rustling up half a dozen or more. We now live in Vermont. The options are pretty much limited to Huy Fong. Reese makes a vastly inferior product that doesn’t belong on the same shelf that can be found in some supermarkets. I know two Asian grocery stores (neither of which specializes on any particular country to my uninformed eye). They’re both small enough that they aren’t stocking hundreds of varieties of any single sauce. So yeah. Credit to Huy Fong for capturing the mindshare with a quality product and getting available basically nationwide.
  - brcmthrowaway 8mo ago
    Why move to a colder place?
- soared 8mo ago
  In places with Asian grocery stores, or cities with larger Asian isles, yes - we have tons of options. But sriracha is widely loved, many people have never heard of sambal but use sriracha all day.
  - vel0city 8mo ago
    I agree many Americans wouldn't have a clue if you just asked them for sambal but if you said "that spicy chili paste in the jar at Asian restaurants" they'd know exactly what you're talking about.
- 8mo ago
nemo44x 8mo ago
Imagine owning a money printing machine and then breaking it because you want it to print more money more quickly.
- thaumasiotes 8mo ago
  People have been imagining that for a long time. https://fablesofaesop.com/the-goose-with-the-golden-eggs.html https://fablesofaesop.com/the-goose-with-the-golden-eggs.htm...
smcg 8mo ago
Now I know why the local dive bar stopped using a sriracha bottle for storing hand soap.
bschmidt97979 8mo ago
[dead]
josefritzishere 8mo ago
David Tran goes down in history for one of the biggest CEO blunders ever made.
wiether 8mo ago
As someone from outside the US, it's really confusing. To me "Sriracha" is like "ketchup", it's a common name, not a brand. Never heard of the names cited on Reddit. We find this sauce everywhere here in France, Go-Tan being the most popular but there's also some smaller brands or products imported by "Tang Frères"
- Karawebnetwork 8mo ago
  They are referring to Huy Fong's Sriracha sauce. It's the one that took the market by storm. Even in small towns where the "Asian" section was practically empty, you could see the red bottle with the green cap. It even escaped the small corner of the grocery store to be displayed next to Heinz ketchup. For many, it was their first experience with hot sauce, apart from Tabasco.
- halapro 8mo ago
  The sriracha sauces one you mentioned are effectively copies of the sauce made and popularized in the US by Huy Fong. So it's not so much that "sriracha is like ketchup" but just that you don't know the origin of the sauce. It's like saying "we have a lot of cola products in France, what's so special about Coca Cola?" Now, if you were Thai that would be different story, as "sriracha" means a completely different sauce (and place) in Thailand, and thus more "generic"
- quesera 8mo ago
  In the US, Huy Fong was the only Sriracha that I ever saw (and commonly only on the west coast), until the very early 2000s. My understanding was/is that Huy Fong could have trademarked the name in the US back then, but they chose not to based on the founder's humiity and/or naivete. Somewhere around 2003(?), Sriracha (still only Huy Fong) became an Internet sensation and then very quickly there were a dozen brands available, all calling themselves Sriracha (legally OK), and often imitating the Huy Fong trade dress in sort-of subtle ways. Huy Fong pushed back on some of those imitators. And then Huy Fong stopped being able to produce marketable volumes ("bad harvest" was the explanation at the time), and then it started tasting far less good, but still less bad than the others. Presumably this corresponds to their supplier change, which gives me a new appreciation for terroir. I have never found another Sriracha that is comparable to Y2K-era Huy Fong. Modern Huy Fong is just OK. I don't think it would have become an Internet sensation if the product was always thus. I've tried at least 25 other brands, searching for that taste. So much disappointment!
FatherOfCurses 8mo ago
The same hand that you make a handshake deal can stab you in the back. Always get it in a contract. https://youtu.be/jVkLVRt6c1U?si=tOVgGrLqbcWzL8A9 https://youtu.be/jVkLVRt6c1U?si=tOVgGrLqbcWzL8A9
seemaze 8mo ago
In the spirit of HN, I humbly submit the FOSS (Free and Open Source Sauce) alternative to Siracha: https://github.com/aweijnitz/recipe-el_fuego_viviente https://github.com/aweijnitz/recipe-el_fuego_viviente
- BrokenCogs 8mo ago
  Can this be containerized? :D
OptionOfT 8mo ago
I refuse to eat Srirarcha due to its use of Xantan gum. Using Xantan gum is a sign of ultra processing. It's used to change mouth-feel, which is basically lying to the body. I always recommend people to read / listen to https://www.amazon.com/Ultra-Processed-People-Science-Behind-Food/dp/1324036729 https://www.amazon.com/Ultra-Processed-People-Science-Behind... to understand these ingredients and what they do to our bodies.
pentagrama 8mo ago
As someone not from the U.S., this thread confused me at first and I had to look it up. What tripped me up is that sriracha is the name of a type of sauce, not a trademarked brand. It’s similar to how many companies can make “ketchup”. In contrast, Tabasco Sauce is a registered brand, so only one company can sell a sauce called Tabasco. Because of that, several companies produce sriracha. The one most people associate with the name in the U.S. is Huy Fong Foods (the “rooster” bottle, often simply called Sriracha). But it’s just one brand among many, like Underwood Ranches Sriracha (made by the former pepper supplier mentioned in the story). So when the OP says “the Sriracha guys screwed over their supplier”, they are talking specifically about Huy Fong, not the sauce style itself.
burnt-resistor 8mo ago
They also polluted their local community and instead of cleaning up threatened to move like some garden variety snowflake rich friends of FDR. https://www.vice.com/en/article/that-smelly-sriracha-factory-is-threatening-to-move/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/that-smelly-sriracha-factory...

419 points by thunderbong 8mo ago

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

pprotas 8mo ago

Human greed knows no bounds

neya 8mo ago

I wish there was a wall of shame blacklist for CEOs who pull unethical shit off. With reviews and ratings from everyone around them. Kind of like yelp, but for CEOs. Then, anyone who wants to start a new venture or giving them any money, can then go look em up there before signing a contract with these trash CEOs. Right now, they only get away with all this because it all happens under the table and not enough people know.

kvdveer 8mo ago
I suppose court records can function as such a list. If you also want 'alledged assholery' on that list, the list will just turn into a list of CEOs, due to false reports.
- neya 8mo ago
  It would be nice to aggregate all that and put it under a "profile". Kind of like facebook, but your entire profile feed is just the long list of court records, assholery and screw overs for other people. I actually saw a version that someone did for Jack (Twitter's ex founder) a few years ago and it was hilarious but cleverly informative. That's honestly where I got this idea from.
  - c22 8mo ago
    Why stop at CEOs?? If you implement this for everybody then I will know who to sell my used car to and who is an unworthy jerk!
- fake-name 8mo ago
  > false reports. Are you sure they're false?
  - thaumasiotes 8mo ago
    Are we sure that some reports of every person are false? Of course we are.
- hinkley 8mo ago
  Given the vast over representation of sociopathy and malignant narcissism in CEOs it’s going to be most CEOs even if you filter out false claims. But if you’re gonna hate someone it’s good if you have a real reason to do so instead of bullshit and rumors.
vasco 8mo ago
That only works for poor people because CEOs will sue immediately. Someone with a lot of money for legal insurance would have to run it.
- neya 8mo ago
  Well, this kind of data actually exists. The key is to maintain anonymity. Glassdoor does it. You will see a lot of employees actually complain about management and seniors by name on there.
  - vasco 8mo ago
    Glassdoor, as big as it is, allows for deleting bad reviews.
ReptileMan 8mo ago
There is such wall. Usually published by Fortune.
SilverElfin 8mo ago
Not just CEOs, but we also need it for investors. For example when startups screw over employees on equity, the founders, board members, and their firms, should all be on a public blacklist.
- NickC25 8mo ago
  Same goes for prospective investors, too! If someone is known to be a ghoster, a gaslighter, a bullshitter, or someone who isn't serious and wants to waste the time of founders, it should be known.
- red-iron-pine 8mo ago
  ITT we recreate public filing rules
oakmad 8mo ago
Well there used to be fuckedcompany.com that served a similar purpose. Of course it was litigated into history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucked_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucked_Company
- Barbing 8mo ago
  >The site was taken offline for two days in August 2002; Ford Motor Company law firm Howard Phillips & Andersen had threatened litigation against FC's upstream provider HostGator as a means of silencing a discussion of a series of layoffs entitled "Ford, where finding a job is job one." Ford claimed that it infringed a trademark slogan "Ford, where quality is job one," discontinued after widespread use from 1980 to 1997. The site eventually returned minus the news of the Ford layoffs. Anybody remember that? How damaging were those threads to Ford, I wonder. Hurt executive pride the most?
- CPLX 8mo ago
  FC wasn't litigated into history, it just had its moment and then passed and pud moved on to do other things.
- neya 8mo ago
  That's an awesome domain name, tbh. Polite warning for anyone trying to Google the name. "Fucked company" results in porn listings (but I should have seen this coming tbh) :')
socalgal2 8mo ago
It won’t help. At my second job the president hired a VP with a white collar criminal record and told everyone not to bring it up
- Ma8ee 8mo ago
  The POTUS is well known for screwing over contractors and lenders. It clearly didn't damage his reputation enough.
  - red-iron-pine 8mo ago
    arguably is the reason why his business kept failing. you can only screw over suppliers a couple of times before the word gets out and no one wants to do business with you. now they want the cash up front, and with sizable markups to CYA. a reasonable person would try to unfuck that perception; instead Trump double-down on the grift
  - mrguyorama 8mo ago
    The most insane part of that is all the generally "normal" businesses who signed contracts with him despite this well publicized history. People like law firms with long histories. Trump has always preferred dragging out a court battle to actually signing a small check for services rendered, and outright brags about it. He explicitly believes stiffing your contractors is what "Good business" means. Because he is a selfish child and getting stuff for free is his worldview. But utter morons still line up to get shafted. I just don't understand. I couldn't get a car loan because I have no credit history even though I had enough cash in the bank to buy the car yet people will still line up to suck the toe of someone with a known history of successfully screwing all their business partners. Same with how his administration is full of people who don't recognize he will happily throw them under the bus for any reason even though that's all he has done for the past decade. There is just a shocking inability for the common person to connect people to their history in the USA. The guy who started a trade war and caused prices to increase was voted in because prices were too high. The math don't math.
    - 8mo ago
atoav 8mo ago
I wish there would just be laws against this type of behaviour, but we all know who is in control of which laws are getting passed. So short of that social shaming will have to do. A CEO that treated humans and/or the planet like dirt, should for example be unable to go to a restaurant, a bar, a park, down a road, onto a beach without getting thrown out or ridiculed, heckled or just called out by others. Behave like scum? Get treated like scum. Fuck with the tribe? Get thrown out. It is one of the oldest correctives for shit behavior any society has ever used in the history of humanity. The problem is they have created a world in which they have too many spaces to avoid this type of consequences. Now of course within the rules of our society everyone should get a fair process. But these people are the ones who ignore and bend the rules the most and even have them rewritten. At some point when you play a game and you constantly have the other guy break the rules and bribe the referee to make ever more elaborate exceptions for them, at some point you just have to cancel the game and ensure it is never again played with that person on the field. They can watch from the sideline, but playing? Nope. Now this should not target the occasional ethically neutral or even ethically responsible CEO, but I am afraid by that point it will be hard to have people see that difference anymore. It will come crashing down one way or another.
mellosouls 8mo ago
As a bolshie type myself, very quick to moan at higher-ups, I think we need to be realistic that often we grunts don't have the big picture (especially the politics) and unfortunately that won't stop somebody lowdown move from merely internal letting off steam to anonymous public borderline slander. There is Glassdoor etc though for people who want to have their say; that all these platforms will be gamed and manipulated is a given.
- salawat 8mo ago
  Nah, nah, nah. Let me help you there. You don't have the big picture because you either haven't asked, or it hasn't been shared with you. If you ask, and you still don't have it, it's being intentionally hidden, or the person doesn't know/can't articulate the connection. One of these is a problem for the org. The other is potentially structurally beneficial for the org, but a massive problem for you. Feel free to guess which is which. I leave it as an exercise to the student.

Mistletoe 8mo ago

Now I know to buy the Underwood brand sriracha. It looks like this: https://a.co/d/06NNRslo https://a.co/d/06NNRslo

eeixlk 8mo ago
Nothing against Underwood or Siracha in general, so buy what you want but $12 dollars per bottle is crazy, unless this is your favorite thing ever. So many other flavors to discover, and they wont be warehoused for months.
- NitpickLawyer 8mo ago
  > $12 dollars per bottle is crazy Hot sauce is pretty easy to make if you're inclined to go that route. You only need a scale and a blender, and some basic kitchen skills. You get to explore a lot and control for flavour / heat with adding stuff to the mix. Plenty of good content on yt you can get inspiration from. It's also something you can make into a hobby. You can go as low effort as buying fresh peppers from a market when in season, or start growing yourself. Growing can be anywhere from extremely low maintenance (i.e. just water them from time to time and leave them on a window sill) or get into advanced stuff like pruning, soil ph, cross pollination and all that stuff. Some peppers are prolific growers, and you get fresh peppers, pepper paste, chili flakes and sauce from a potentially low effort hobby. And they make some nice gifts as well.
  - duttish 8mo ago
    I've tried getting started with this but my first attempt a habanero/mango sauce was _horrible_, must've used a slop recipe or something. Do you have a good base to recommend?
  - Barbing 8mo ago
    >leave them on a window sill Ooooh anybody have a rec for the most idiot-proof hot thing to try to grow?
    - 8mo ago

SilverElfin 8mo ago

Yep this was a very controversial thing when it happened. They tried to squeeze the farmer who supplied all their peppers from their earliest days - why would you do that unless you have no morality? And now the Huy Fong Sriracha tastes different, and Underwood’s own Sriracha is actually what tastes best. I’m glad to hear there was a happy ending to the epic greediness and underhanded tactics of Huy Fong: > Later, obviously, there's a lawsuit. Funnily enough, it wasn't actually Underwood who sued Huy Fong. It was Huy Fong who sued Underwood, seeking refunds for payments it had made earlier under their contracts. Underwood turned around and counterclaimed for breach of contract and fraud and a bunch of other shit. Underwood succeeded - there was a unanimous jury verdict in their favor - and got awarded about $13 million in compensatory damages, and another $10 million in punitive damages (these are only awarded where you've done something so outrageous that it's quasi-criminal; it's to deter other people from doing similar things).

hinkley 8mo ago
On the Reddit thread it was said that underwood hasn’t quite exactly nailed the, I guess viscosity because “consistency” has other connotations and if anything they seem to be more consistent. I love that they had to buy chilis on the open market because their supplier fired the customer. Mostly because I’ve hardly ever gotten to fire a customer. Even when they really should have.
- thaumasiotes 8mo ago
  > I guess viscosity because “consistency” has other connotations and if anything they seem to be more consistent. You're thinking of two different words. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/consistency https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/consistency Sense 1: agreement of parts or features to one another or a whole Sense 2: degree of firmness, density, or viscosity Notably, sense 1 has a related adjective, consistent, and sense 2 does not.
  - ATMLOTTOBEER 8mo ago
    he knows. that's why he said viscosity. reread it slowly

walthamstow 8mo ago

I don't know what tariffs you guys have put on foreign sauces these days but the Flying Goose brand made in Thailand is the only brand that tastes right to me.

julianz 8mo ago
Flying Goose is good, my favourite is Ox brand. It's very punchy, heavy on the garlic.
antonymoose 8mo ago
If we’re talking alternatives, the Three Mountain Yellow Sriracha became our staple at home during the shortage. We still use red for a variety of sauces but rarely as a direct condiment.
- zem 8mo ago
  this is my go to as well, I find the red one has a harsh taste to it
ccozan 8mo ago
I also never heard of Huy Fong until now. Flying Goose is the one that you find to buy in Europe. Also, very tasty!
brettermeier 8mo ago
Oh there's another Sriracha Sauce?
- ChoGGi 8mo ago
  Sriracha sauce originates from Si Racha, Thailand. So yes, lots of them.

JacobAldridge 8mo ago

I remember when Sriracha disappeared from the market for a while (2022?). The story I heard at the time was heavily positive, talking up the handshakes and relationship angle - suggesting the supplier had a bad harvest (drought) so the manufacturer had decided not to produce sauce rather than produce an inferior product. Either rumours or more lies - and a good way to help the market forget the earlier flavour and be grateful for a sloppier solution to 'return'?

the_biot 8mo ago
Yeah, I remember the two parties accusing each other of essentially the same thing -- destroying a 25-year business relationship over short-term greed, for no good reason. It's good to see the result of the court case, now at least we know who tried to screw who over.

ErroneousBosh 8mo ago

I don't know why people like Sriracha anyway. It just tastes of "hot" and vinegar. There are far better hot sauces out there, available at your local Chinese, Pakistani, or Iranian supermarket.

stuaxo 8mo ago
It's just slightly spicey ketchup, pretty sweet. There are definitely better things out there.
- tbyehl 8mo ago
  They have a spicy ketchup product that I liked, tho it has disappeared from my local stores. At the time I first noticed it at the store it was the hottest one that also matched the thick consistency I expect from ketchup.
- thaumasiotes 8mo ago
  > It's just slightly spicey ketchup What does "ketchup" mean to you? I don't see how you can call it "ketchup" when it contains no tomatoes. In Indonesia the same word ["kecap"] would mean "soy sauce", but that is obviously also a completely unrelated product.
  - ErroneousBosh 8mo ago
    Ketchup only being made from tomatoes is a comparatively recent thing. In the UK in the 1500s or so the most common condiment was mushroom ketchup, which you pretty much have to make from scratch these days and that's a bit of a pity. You cook the mushrooms off with mace, nutmeg, ginger, pepper, maybe some tamarind (that's the stuff that gives Worcester sauce its sour flavour - it's got the same thing in it as sorrel which I guess you could also use but that's better for like a pesto), brown sugar, and some red wine, and just keep going until it reduces down into a thick sticky paste. It's quite a strong flavour, probably a bit full on for the average American palate, although I know people over there who make it and apparently enjoy it. Tomato ketchup is like a cross between a pickle and a jam, where (at least in theory) the sugar and vinegar act as preservatives and the pectin from the tomatoes makes it set up into a sticky jelly. People also made walnut ketchup, which is difficult to do where I am because you need green unripe walnuts and there aren't a lot of walnut trees here. If you live near a walnut grower see if you can get a bag of unripe ones and have a go at it. The unripe walnut juice will stain the hell out of everything it comes near - it'll stain Pyrex, ffs - but it's good stuff that goes nicely with a bit of venison.

netika 8mo ago

When I see a company this big screwing over their partner after 20 years of partnership for some lousy tens of millions of dollars (which is probably peanuts compared to worldwide profits), I immediately think that everything is not as simple as it seems. In this post, Underwood is obviously a virtuous, hard working victim and the sriracha guys are the villains. I don’t believe that there are good and bad companies and I firmly believe that there is some underlying reason for this situation.

pbmonster 8mo ago
The court awarded $10M in punitive damages in addition to the $13M in compensatory damages. So the options are basically "Huy Fong's lawyers are criminally incompetent" or "Huy Fong absolutely screwed over their supplier".
dsr_ 8mo ago
By way of contrast, I've seen so many corporations led by deranged idiots who used to make good decisions within their realm of competence that I have no trouble believing that Huy Fong decided that they could completely dominate Underwood, and were very wrong. The more power a person believes they have, the stupider they act. Quoth wikipedia: "The jury unanimously ruled in favor of Underwood on the grounds of breach of contract and fraud."
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]

textembedding 8mo ago

This story and its retellings appear on Reddit's front page every two months like clockwork. https://www.reddit.com/search/?q=huy+fong https://www.reddit.com/search/?q=huy+fong Each time it gets retold, the sriracha cartoon villain's mustache grows longer and more twirled. Somehow, Underwood Ranches' competing product never gets failed to get mentioned in a top comment, along with all the places you can buy it, how much better/hotter it tastes, and how superior its ingredients are. I've never seen something so obviously and clumsily astroturfed, yet be so effective. Their entire growth strategy is enemy positioning on social media. You gotta hand it to the COO (who according to the story he's crafted is the loyal and virtuous hero) as he's running circles around the incompetent and out-of-touch management at sriricha who likely have no idea what's going on. It appears sheer spite and vengeance is what brought Underwood Ranches back from the brink of bankruptcy. Now that's a genuine American success story.

IshKebab 8mo ago
Uhm. What are you suggesting exactly? That Underwood somehow manipulated Huy Fong into screwing them over and then suing them, just so that they could get a good story out of it? Do you think it's fabricated? You can read the exact same thing in the court judgement. It's barely any longer than the reddit comment.
- jakewins 8mo ago
  They are clearly suggesting that the story recurring every two months is Astro-turfed, not that the story itself is false?
  - functionmouse 8mo ago
    Here I was foolishly thinking AstroTurf meant false grass
    - stdbrouw 8mo ago
      Well, it implies that the "grassroots" element of it is fake, the message itself being false is optional.

squid_ca 8mo ago

Off-topic: After visiting a Reddit link via Hacker News on my phone, my Reddit layout is unusable. How do I get out of old Reddit and back to something usable? Related: why does HN always link to old.reddit?

nxtbl 8mo ago
Because the "new" layout is awful.
- squid_ca 8mo ago
  Yes, I agree, but the old one is unusable on mobile, and visiting old.reddit.com forces me to keep using it until I logout and login again, which is also awful
RankingMember 8mo ago
The new layout is awful on desktop. Change "old" to "www" and you'll be all set on mobile.
- squid_ca 8mo ago
  That doesn’t work, but that’s not your fault! I think it’s setting some cookie or something, which makes this annoying to deal with. Anyway, thanks for the reply
  - ChoGGi 8mo ago
    The option to change it is buried in the settings.

1tdimhcsb 8mo ago

[dead]

throw0101c 8mo ago

I think this Fortune story has a decent timeline of events and explains the perspective of both sides: > At first, Underwood recalls, he was confused and hurt. “We were trying to figure out what the hell’s going on,” he tells me when I visit his offices in Camarillo, Calif., in December. “Because we were really vulnerable, both in the percentage of our business that he commanded—and I guess our belief that we were going to have a long-term relationship.” But he soon became convinced, Underwood tells me, that Tran’s intentions were bad, and had been for some time. “Basically, he really was out to destroy me,” he says. “He didn’t give a damn about me or our family or all that we’d done together.” > Over at Huy Fong, feelings were similarly raw. Tran felt betrayed, and blindsided by accusations that he had been underhanded. For most of three decades, he had remained loyal to Underwood as his only pepper producer, and each year he had handed over millions on the promise of a harvest, a gesture that he saw as an act of faith. Now all that trust had collapsed in a petty argument over money. > Tran has come to believe that Underwood was trying to drive him to bankruptcy, then steal his sauce business. “I helped him because he grew chili for me,” he says. “He made money, he owned land. But it is not enough. He wanted to take over my business.” It felt like being “stabbed in the back,” adds Donna Lam, Tran’s sister-in-law and executive operations officer. * https://archive.is/https://fortune.com/2024/01/30/sriracha-shortage-huy-fong-foods-tabasco-underwood-ranches/ https://archive.is/https://fortune.com/2024/01/30/sriracha-s...

theamk 8mo ago
That story actually pretty bad.. Court findings are pretty clear on this [0]: > When Roberts arrived, Tran told him that he was forming a new company. Lam was going to operate the company. Tran told Roberts that Roberts would be working for the new company. > When Roberts declined the job offer, Tran was not happy. Tran told Roberts that Underwood would have to deliver peppers for $500 per ton to compete with Chinese pepper mash that sold for $300 per ton. [...] Underwood was suddenly facing imminent catastrophic financial consequences. It could not grow peppers for $500 a ton. Its costs averaged $610 a ton. [...] Tran refused to provide Underwood with prepayments needed to finance the crop. Tran also insisted that Underwood contract with Chilico rather than Huy Fong. OK, 8 days after agreeing on contract (!), the Huy Fong man tried to hire away Underwood's COO (Roberts), pushes hard for price below cost, refuses to provide money for planting, and tries to offload responsibility to a shell company. This sounds about as evil as it gets, and Underwood was right to refuse. And what does the journalist say about this? "He wanted to take over my business"? "It felt like being "stabbed in the back""? I am sorry, I think that story author was fed some BS by Tran, and did not bother to verify it. (Alternatively, maybe Tran has a explanation that makes sense for him... I'd like to hear the thoughts of someone who walks back on contract few days after it's made, and how they justify it to themselves - but sadly that fortune story does not have this) [0] https://cases.justia.com/california/court-of-appeal/2021-b303096.pdf?ts=1627407095 https://cases.justia.com/california/court-of-appeal/2021-b30...

andyferris 8mo ago

I don’t understand the sriracha “thing” in North America. Don’t you guys have 100’s of sambal oleks from SE Asia to choose from?

InUrNetz 8mo ago
We can buy it, but its not common. Sriracha is in most restaurants, I keep a bottle in my fridge, it's in every grocery store, etc.
mauvehaus 8mo ago
In short: no. I’m sure that in the Boston area we’d have had no trouble rustling up half a dozen or more. We now live in Vermont. The options are pretty much limited to Huy Fong. Reese makes a vastly inferior product that doesn’t belong on the same shelf that can be found in some supermarkets. I know two Asian grocery stores (neither of which specializes on any particular country to my uninformed eye). They’re both small enough that they aren’t stocking hundreds of varieties of any single sauce. So yeah. Credit to Huy Fong for capturing the mindshare with a quality product and getting available basically nationwide.
- brcmthrowaway 8mo ago
  Why move to a colder place?
soared 8mo ago
In places with Asian grocery stores, or cities with larger Asian isles, yes - we have tons of options. But sriracha is widely loved, many people have never heard of sambal but use sriracha all day.
- vel0city 8mo ago
  I agree many Americans wouldn't have a clue if you just asked them for sambal but if you said "that spicy chili paste in the jar at Asian restaurants" they'd know exactly what you're talking about.
8mo ago

nemo44x 8mo ago

Imagine owning a money printing machine and then breaking it because you want it to print more money more quickly.

thaumasiotes 8mo ago
People have been imagining that for a long time. https://fablesofaesop.com/the-goose-with-the-golden-eggs.html https://fablesofaesop.com/the-goose-with-the-golden-eggs.htm...

smcg 8mo ago

Now I know why the local dive bar stopped using a sriracha bottle for storing hand soap.

bschmidt97979 8mo ago

[dead]

josefritzishere 8mo ago

David Tran goes down in history for one of the biggest CEO blunders ever made.

wiether 8mo ago

As someone from outside the US, it's really confusing. To me "Sriracha" is like "ketchup", it's a common name, not a brand. Never heard of the names cited on Reddit. We find this sauce everywhere here in France, Go-Tan being the most popular but there's also some smaller brands or products imported by "Tang Frères"

Karawebnetwork 8mo ago
They are referring to Huy Fong's Sriracha sauce. It's the one that took the market by storm. Even in small towns where the "Asian" section was practically empty, you could see the red bottle with the green cap. It even escaped the small corner of the grocery store to be displayed next to Heinz ketchup. For many, it was their first experience with hot sauce, apart from Tabasco.
halapro 8mo ago
The sriracha sauces one you mentioned are effectively copies of the sauce made and popularized in the US by Huy Fong. So it's not so much that "sriracha is like ketchup" but just that you don't know the origin of the sauce. It's like saying "we have a lot of cola products in France, what's so special about Coca Cola?" Now, if you were Thai that would be different story, as "sriracha" means a completely different sauce (and place) in Thailand, and thus more "generic"
quesera 8mo ago
In the US, Huy Fong was the only Sriracha that I ever saw (and commonly only on the west coast), until the very early 2000s. My understanding was/is that Huy Fong could have trademarked the name in the US back then, but they chose not to based on the founder's humiity and/or naivete. Somewhere around 2003(?), Sriracha (still only Huy Fong) became an Internet sensation and then very quickly there were a dozen brands available, all calling themselves Sriracha (legally OK), and often imitating the Huy Fong trade dress in sort-of subtle ways. Huy Fong pushed back on some of those imitators. And then Huy Fong stopped being able to produce marketable volumes ("bad harvest" was the explanation at the time), and then it started tasting far less good, but still less bad than the others. Presumably this corresponds to their supplier change, which gives me a new appreciation for terroir. I have never found another Sriracha that is comparable to Y2K-era Huy Fong. Modern Huy Fong is just OK. I don't think it would have become an Internet sensation if the product was always thus. I've tried at least 25 other brands, searching for that taste. So much disappointment!

FatherOfCurses 8mo ago

The same hand that you make a handshake deal can stab you in the back. Always get it in a contract. https://youtu.be/jVkLVRt6c1U?si=tOVgGrLqbcWzL8A9 https://youtu.be/jVkLVRt6c1U?si=tOVgGrLqbcWzL8A9

seemaze 8mo ago

In the spirit of HN, I humbly submit the FOSS (Free and Open Source Sauce) alternative to Siracha: https://github.com/aweijnitz/recipe-el_fuego_viviente https://github.com/aweijnitz/recipe-el_fuego_viviente

BrokenCogs 8mo ago
Can this be containerized? :D

OptionOfT 8mo ago

I refuse to eat Srirarcha due to its use of Xantan gum. Using Xantan gum is a sign of ultra processing. It's used to change mouth-feel, which is basically lying to the body. I always recommend people to read / listen to https://www.amazon.com/Ultra-Processed-People-Science-Behind-Food/dp/1324036729 https://www.amazon.com/Ultra-Processed-People-Science-Behind... to understand these ingredients and what they do to our bodies.

pentagrama 8mo ago

As someone not from the U.S., this thread confused me at first and I had to look it up. What tripped me up is that sriracha is the name of a type of sauce, not a trademarked brand. It’s similar to how many companies can make “ketchup”. In contrast, Tabasco Sauce is a registered brand, so only one company can sell a sauce called Tabasco. Because of that, several companies produce sriracha. The one most people associate with the name in the U.S. is Huy Fong Foods (the “rooster” bottle, often simply called Sriracha). But it’s just one brand among many, like Underwood Ranches Sriracha (made by the former pepper supplier mentioned in the story). So when the OP says “the Sriracha guys screwed over their supplier”, they are talking specifically about Huy Fong, not the sauce style itself.

burnt-resistor 8mo ago

They also polluted their local community and instead of cleaning up threatened to move like some garden variety snowflake rich friends of FDR. https://www.vice.com/en/article/that-smelly-sriracha-factory-is-threatening-to-move/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/that-smelly-sriracha-factory...