When David Tran stepped off a freighter ship as a Vietnamese refugee 40 years ago, not too many people would have pegged him to be a future culinary superstar at the helm of a multimillion dollar food brand. Hot sauce enthusiast or not, there’s no escaping the rooster-adorned, green-capped bottles of Tran’s Huy Fong Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce (AKA Rooster Sauce)—be it in a restaurant, the grocery store, or on a t-shirt on the streets of New York.
While the sauce has been a staple of traditional Southeast Asian foods for decades, it has since been used to add a spicy kick to everything from popcorn to waffles in more recent years. In fact, the bright red sauce was even given the coveted title of “Ingredient of the Year” by food magazine Bon Appétit in 2009.
But how did this simple concoction of chili peppers, distilled vinegar, garlic, sugar, and salt beat out other hot sauces to find its way onto the plates—and into the hearts—of mainstream America?
How did a Vietnamese refugee with broken English and few skills walk off of a freighter ship in 1979 and manage to build a multimillion-dollar brand with a loyal following that any Fortune 500 company would be envious of?
The answer comes down to a familiar strategy that we’ve seen time and time again with some of the world’s most successful and well-loved brands: do one thing, and do it the best that you can.
Which is how the story of Huy Fong’s Sriracha Sauce started, long before it even had a name.
Within weeks of landing in Los Angeles’ Chinatown neighborhood after spending days at sea on a freighter ship, Vietnamese refugee David Tran began selling his hot sauces out of buckets to Asian food restaurants around the area. The sauces were based on recipes he made back home, but weren’t available in the United States.
News of Tran’s delicious ‘Secret Sriracha Sauce’ spread fast to local chefs and, within a year of landing on American soil, he found himself at the helm of a small empire that had been built primarily through word-of-mouth. But with orders piling up, he had to take the next dive into big business; he had to give this ‘secret sauce’ a name and an identity.
Inspired by the boat that brought his family and 3,317 other Vietnamese refugees to the United States shortly after the Vietnam War—the Huey Fong—Huy Fong Foods was born. As for the infamous rooster logo, Tran hired a Vietnamese street artist to create the sketch in honor of the Year of the Rooster—the year Tran was born in accordance with the Chinese calendar—before he left for the United States. When it came time to picking a logo, he simply pulled the sketch from the anonymous artist out of his pocket and made it official.
With a shiny new identity and a (literally) hot product, Tran’s hot sauce empire spread like wildfire across Los Angeles and the surrounding areas. In fact, demand for the sauce spread to restaurants as far south as San Diego and as far north as San Francisco—all by word-of-mouth. Of course, being the honest and self-reliant businessman that he was, Tran made all of the deliveries himself in a blue Chevy van featuring a hand-painted logo that he created himself. And business kept booming.
By 1987, Tran had already outgrown his 5,000 square foot facility and moved to a 68,000 square foot facility that could accommodate more equipment. Not for long though; as the “Rooster Sauce” continued to spread around the country, Tran yet again found himself needing to move to an even larger facility to satisfy the surge in demand. This time around, it was into the former 170,000 square foot Wham-O manufacturing facility that was once used to churn out everything from frisbees to hula-hoops.
Today, Huy Fong Foods operates out of a behemoth 650,000 square foot, state-of-the-art facility Tran designed himself to keep up with growing demand.
While hundreds of other brands have spent millions of dollars on frivolous ad campaigns, Tran’s journey—and the resulting brand story—is one based on hard work and doing things right. So much, in fact, that the universally loved condiment has earned its own mythical status by fans over the years while Tran hasn’t spent a single penny on marketing.
And today, everybody from fast food chains to car manufacturers want to be a part of that story.
ay’s potato chips introduced a Sriracha flavor, Subway introduced a special Sriracha sandwich, and Jack in the Box offers a Sriracha hamburger. Chobani introduced a Sriracha mango Greek yogurt flavor while Heinz jumped on the bandwagon with Sriracha ketchup. Let’s also not forget the Sriracha-infused pizza crust at Pizza Hut and an entire Sriracha-branded takeover of Wendy’s, including their website and digital marketing channels in December of 2016. Lexus introduced a Sriracha-inspired red edition of their popular IS sports sedan (green cap-inspired body trim included) and you’d be hard-pressed to not find a shopping cart’s worth of Sriracha-infused food creations the next time you stroll down the aisles of your neighborhood Trader Joe’s.
The Rooster Sauce has become so versatile, it has risen above the southeast Asian cuisine it came from and can be found in the well-stocked pantries of restaurants for just about every international cuisine. Heck, it can even be found in Kylie Jenner’s Instagram feed.
But no matter where you see—or taste—the Rooster Sauce next, remember that it all started with a Vietnamese refugee who simply wanted to make the best sriracha-style sauce and a better life for his family.
As for how hot the sauce is?
“Hot sauce must be hot,” Tran once said. “If you don’t like it hot, use less.”
