Sam Amico
The latest news on Sriracha hot sauce just might leaving you steaming mad.
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It might also leave you broke. That’s right, a shortage of the popular hot sauce is creating an online market with jacked-up prices — with two Huy Fong Sriracha bottles going for a whopping $114.59 on Amazon. Things aren’t much better for Huy Fong’s chili garlic sauce, as a three-pack of 8-oz bottles is going for a cool $129.97.
So yeah, it’s OK to get hot under the color about all this. Why? Because it’s nuts.
As CBS News reported, Huy Fong isn’t the only maker of these types of sauces, but it does rule the industry. “Huy Fong Sriracha is the top hot sauce in 31 states based on Instacart purchase data,” CBS wrote.
Sadly, it does not appear as if there’s any relief on the horizon.
“Unfortunately, we are still experiencing a shortage of raw material,” a spokesperson for the brand told CBS. “At this time, we have no estimations of when supply will increase.”
Interestingly, Huy Fong has dealt with a shortage of its chili pepper sauce for several years now.
“Currently, due to weather conditions affecting the quality of chili peppers, we now face a more severe shortage of chili,” Huy Fong wrote in a letter in 2022. “Unfortunately, this is out of our control and without this essential ingredient we are unable to produce any of our products.”
And that has some fans especially heated.
“While it’s not clear where Huy Fong gets its peppers from, production of chiles has been down in a number of locations because of drought,” CBS reported. “In New Mexico, chile production for 2021 saw a 22% decrease from 2020, according to the USDA’s Mountain Regional Field Office of the National Agricultural Statistics Service and the New Mexico Department of Agriculture. Of the 51,000 tons produced in 2021, 46,500 tons were green and 4,500 tons were red. Production increased slightly in 2022 to 53,000 tons, but that still falls well short of the 65,000 tons produced in 2020.”
