How Sriracha creator David Tran fled Vietnam to build a billion-dollar hot sauce empire

The entrepreneur who popularized Sriracha hot sauce in the US has spoken in a rare interview, having been dubbed America’s only hot sauce billionaire.

David Tran, 77, founded Huy Fong Foods in Southern California after fleeing Vietnam in 1978 with his wife and son, with his life savings of $20,000 in gold hidden in cans of condensed milk.

He is the sole owner of Huy Fong, which was recently valued at $1 billion by research firm IBISWorld, based on estimated sales of $131 million in 2020.

Despite his wealth, Tran remains stubbornly focused on the quality of his Sriracha, the much-loved product emblazoned with a rooster emblem for his birth year in the Chinese zodiac.

“I want to keep making a good quality product, like making hot sauce spicier… and not think about making more profit,” he said. Forbes in a recent profile.

Peppers are unloaded from a truck at the Huy Fong Foods factory in Irwindale.

“I could use less expensive ingredients or promote my products to make more money,” Tran added. ‘But no, my goal is always to try to make a rich man’s chutney at a poor man’s price.’

Tran was born in 1945 in the Vietnamese town of Soc Trang, then still under French colonial rule, according to a 2013 Oral history for the UC Irvine Vietnam American Oral History Project.

He moved to Saigon at the age of 16, where he worked in his brother’s store selling chemicals until he was drafted into the South Vietnamese Army at the height of the Vietnam War.

He served for five years, never seeing combat, working mainly as a cook, until the fall of Saigon in 1975.

By then, married with a child on the way, he went to work with his brother growing chili peppers and came up with the idea of ​​turning them into a sauce to take advantage of wild fluctuations in the prices of whole chili peppers.

But in 1978, the communist government began to pressure Vietnamese of Chinese descent to leave the country. Tran, whose ancestors were Cantonese, fled to Hong Kong.

When Huy Fong Foods founder David Tran immigrated to the US from Vietnam, he named the company after the ship that transported him.

Supplies are seen stored at Huy Fong Foods’ 650,000-square-foot Sriracha chili sauce plant in Irwindale, California

The Huy Fong factory can produce 18,000 bottles of Sriracha per hour

Bottles of Sriracha chili sauce are displayed on shelves in a file photo

In January 1980, Tran, his wife and son moved to Los Angeles and founded Huy Fong Foods, named after the freighter that brought them to the United States.

Tran got his start by selling his Sriracha sauce to restaurants from the back of a pickup truck.

Demand for the sauce skyrocketed and Tran moved into a factory in Rosemead on the outskirts of East Los Angeles, later expanding into the abandoned Wham-O hula hoop factory next door.

In 2010, demand for the sauce forced him to move again to a new 650,000-square-foot facility in Irwindale, where Sriracha is currently made.

In 2013, however, complaints from neighbors about the pungent fumes from the new factory prompted a disorderly conduct lawsuit from the city.

In the ensuing battle, the factory closed briefly, sparking fears of a Sriracha shortage among devotees.

The dispute was eventually settled after Tran installed stronger filters in factory vents, and California officials backed down from Texas attempts to lure the company onto friendlier grounds.

Tran (above) has no plans to sell the business, which he intends to pass on to his children, William, 47, and Yassie, 41, who work there.

Besides Sriracha, Huy Fong only has two other products: a variety of garlic chili and sambal oelek, based on an Indonesian recipe.

The company does not do advertising or marketing, and Tran rarely gives interviews to the press.

Sriracha’s wholesale price hasn’t changed since the early 1980s, and neither have the ingredients: chili, sugar, salt, garlic, and vinegar.

Today the sauce ranks third in sales in the country, after Tabasco, owned by the McIlhenny family since 1868, and Frank’s RedHot, a subsidiary of McCormick & Co.

Tran has no plans to sell the business, which he intends to pass on to his children, William, 47, and Yassie, 41, who work there.