If you ask many people about what they remember about the COVID-19 pandemic, people will give a wide variety of answers, from masking to social distancing to Zoom school. However, one of the most infamous issues of the COVID-19 pandemic was the toilet paper hoarding crisis: people were flooding their local Costco or Walmart and shoving their cars’ trunks full with toilet paper packages.

Now, a little more than 3 years later, we already see history repeating itself with a new commodity: Sriracha sauce. Due to a shortage of their stock of chili peppers in Mexico, Huy Fong Foods (the company that makes Sriracha sauce), has announced limited supply of the popular Asian hot sauce, with much uncertainty as to when it will come back. And just like the toilet paper shortage, Asian and Western grocery stores alike are running out of Sriracha as people stockpile their hot sauce reserves. Even Amazon, the site where any product is available, has none of Huy Fong Foods’ famous Sriracha sauce.

But why do people hoard these items specifically, when the hoarding of other essentials like food or water are more unheard of in America? According to TIME magazine in their article “In the Wake of the Coronavirus, Here's Why Americans Are Hoarding Toilet Paper,” different products have different options to acquire them. For example, if a kind of food like instant ramen is unavailable, people can always just buy a different brand or buy a different food and still satisfy themselves. However, with toilet paper, there is no replacement. In this modern day and age, toilet paper is the only thing we have to clean ourselves after we take a dump (unless you have a bidet, in which case you wouldn’t be affected by the toilet paper shortage anyway).

However, this raises a question. There are plenty of other hot sauces or even other sriracha sauces not made by Huy Fong Foods, yet people are still scrambling to only get the one from Huy Fong Foods. What separates it from all the others? The truth can be found by looking at the company’s philosophy: according to David Tran, founder of Huy Fong Foods, the company’s primary goal has never been to make profits, as evidenced by their lack of advertisements and the fact that Tran doesn’t even keep track of where these bottles are sold to improve his marketing. Instead, the primary goal was to make a high-quality sauce that could be enjoyed by anyone, anywhere. It is made with fresh chili peppers, processed only a day after harvesting. In fact, this is the issue causing the shortage—it’s not that there’s no peppers available, it’s that there aren’t any quality peppers available. Most companies would compromise on this and use their substandard peppers (and maybe raise some prices in the process), but not Huy Fong Foods. That is what makes Sriracha sauce irreplaceable in the eyes of its Asian and Western consumers. No Asian dining experience, from sushi bars to pho restaurants, is complete without a bottle of Sriracha sauce on the table. The garlicky chili paste is something that is irreplaceable to Asian American cuisine, and no other sauce even comes close.

With a reputation as large and a quality as fresh as Sriracha, it is no wonder that people are hoarding this precious commodity. Sriracha is just one-of-a-kind in the hot sauce world, and the shortage has only shown the commitment of Huy Fong Foods to its goals of quality Sriracha for all.

Sources

cbsnews.com/news/sriracha-sauce-huy-fong-shortage/ 
latimes.com/california/story/2023-04-11/sriracha-shortage-california-company-huy-fong-foods-chile-supply 
usatoday.com/story/money/2023/04/07/huy-fong-foods-sriracha-shortage-is-back/11624642002/
cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/sriracha-shortage-what-you-need-to-know-huy-fong/ 
time.com/5803273/hoarding-toilet-paper/
qz.com/132738/the-highly-unusual-company-behind-siracha-the-worlds-coolest-hot-sauce#:~:text=But%20Sriracha%20is%E2%80%94and%20always,from%20the%20competition%2C%20says%20Tran.