Another Sriracha shortage could be coming. A severe drought is to blame.
Jennifer Wunderlich can’t recall the last time Huy Fong Foods’ Sriracha sauce was in stock at her workplace, a New York-based specialty confections and gourmet food distributor.
It’s been “months and months” since Wunderlich said she’s seen the rooster-adorned, green-capped bottles at Nassau Candy, where she works as a customer support and sales specialist. Other distributors said their inventory of the red, garlicky sauce, which has cultivated an ardent popularity, is also depleted - and they worry it won’t be returning any time soon.
Last week, Huy Fong Foods said in a letter to its wholesale buyers that it will be halting Sriracha production until after Labor Day. The reason, according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Washington Post: Its crop of red jalapeño peppers are just not the right shade to produce the beloved sauce known for its citrusy-sweet heat.
“After reevaluating our supply of chili, we have determined that it is too green to proceed with production as it is affecting the color of the product,” the company wrote in a letter, which was first reported by USA Today. “ … Unfortunately, all orders that have been scheduled beginning on May 6, 2024, will be canceled and the status changed to pending.”
A representative for Huy Fong Foods declined to comment on the letter.
The letter Huy Fong Foods sent to distributors said the California-based company hoped to resume production “when our next chili season starts” later this year.
For now, Nassau Candy is stocking up on other sriracha brands to sell to its customers, leading to some of Huy Fong Foods’ competitors “doing really well,” Wunderlich said. But experts told The Post that sriracha fans could face a persistent shortage driven by the severe dry spell in Mexico, a major pepper exporter and the source of Huy Fong Foods and other companies’ chiles.
This is not the first Sriracha shortage for Huy Fong Foods aficionados. The company has halted production at least three times since 2020 - unleashing a panic marked by some saucy fans pilfering bottles, restaurants rationing their supplies and third-party sellers punching up prices. But this latest interruption - during a drought that has parts of Mexico grappling with a water crisis - stands as the latest example of how environmental challenges are affecting the food supply chain.
“This case is very poignant because it shows how an extreme weather event - that has been fueled by climate change - results in major disruptions,” said Guillermo Murray-Tortarolo, a climate scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s Institute for Ecosystem and Sustainability Research.
The sriracha scarcity, he added, also underscores how weather events can affect the availability of foods that rely on specific locations or ingredients, including some cheeses, chocolates and mustards.
Before the tangy-sweet Sriracha is squirted out of a bottle, production begins in fields dotted with red, elongated fruits. Huy Fong Foods’ recipe calls for a special type of pepper: red winter jalapeños, Murray-Tortarolo said.
The peppers are the cooler-temperature-loving cousins of the green variety that are typically spread over nachos or served as poppers. As one of the few jalapeño varieties that don’t tolerate high temperatures well, they can only be grown in the winter cycle, Murray-Tortarolo said. Anything over a balmy 80 degrees will lead the peppers to drop their flowers, stop ripening or produce weird-looking fruits, he added.
That’s why the dry spell in Mexico, with its scorching temperatures, has hurt production of red winter jalapeños. Most of the peppers are grown in northern Mexico, one of the areas most affected by the drought, data from the country’s National Water Commission shows. There, the lack of rain has left reservoirs so low that water destined for agriculture has also been limited - offering no reprieve to the already parched land, Murray-Tortarolo said.
As a result, “there’s been basically no production of jalapeños,” he said, adding that the problem could continue all year.
“We’ll be entering into La Niña,” he said, referring to the climate pattern characterized by cooler-than-average sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean. “For Mexico, this means it won’t rain in the winter, so there will be no breaks for sriracha.”
Why Mexico’s conditions have placed such a strain on Huy Hong Foods in particular may be linked to the company’s supply chain, said Stephanie Walker, a professor and vegetable specialist at New Mexico State University.
For nearly three decades, the company’s sole jalapeño supplier was the California-based Underwood Ranches. But the relationship was severed in 2016 when they had a bitter falling out - and a dispute that began over crop prices soon spiraled into legal battles and allegations of fraud, The Post previously reported.
Huy Fong Foods - as well as other domestic companies - have turned to Mexico, where production costs are lower and labor is both cheaper and more available, Walker said.
The drought affecting that country underscores the need for more research to be done to grow ingredients and breed produce that are less susceptible to extreme weather events - which are expected to continue with the pattern of warmer, drier weather the planet faces, she said.
For Huy Fong Foods purists though, such changes could lead to new and unfamiliar flavors, Murray-Tortarolo said.
“The problem with this sauce is that when companies have tried to make it with other types of jalapeños, it just doesn’t have the same flavor and consumers don’t like it,” he said. “It’s a double-edged sword when the success of this particular sauce comes from a jalapeño that can only be produced in California or Mexico.”
If spice lovers are willing to try new something new, though, Murray-Tortarolo said, the same warm weather that’s harming red winter jalapeños is cranking up the peppers’ levels of capsaicin - the chemicals that give chiles their fiery sensations.
“We haven’t seen a shortage of chili in Mexico,” he said. “On the contrary, some varieties are doing really well in this weather.”
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