Price explosion in the US: Cheap chili sauce suddenly costs a fortune

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Chile emergency in the US! The cult chili sauce Sriracha is now sold out in supermarkets and online stores. The agitator is only available on online marketplaces such as Ebay and Amazon. However, the prices there are sometimes extremely high. As the American news channel CNN reports, the 0.5 liter bottle of Sriracha on eBay costs around $40, the 0.8 liter bottle almost $70. The situation is similar with Amazon. One retailer offers the sauce in a pack of two for $124. A small bottle costs about $5.

What’s behind the price explosion? As Sriracha maker Huy Fong told CNN, a lack of raw materials causes huge bottlenecks in production. “Although production partially resumed last fall, we still have a limited supply,” said a company spokesperson. “At the moment we cannot estimate when the supply will increase again.” We are grateful for the patience of customers “during this unprecedented shortage of supplies”.

The inventor of Sriracha is now a billionaire

At the best of times, 18,000 bottles run every hour Sriracha of band. But not for a while. Especially for the chili peppers, which are essential for the chili sauce, there have been repeated supply bottlenecks for three years. Huy Fong therefore had to cancel customer orders last year. The products Sambal Oelek and Chili Garlic were also affected.

Huy Fong’s Sriracha sauce is one of the most popular hot sauces. It consists of the simplest ingredients: chili peppers, garlic, sugar, salt and vinegar. Vietnamese immigrant David Tran (78) invented the sauce in 1980. “In January 1980 I arrived, in February I made sauce,” Tran told SBS News in March. Tran once described his sriracha as “a rich man’s sauce for a poor man’s purse”. Today, he is a wealthy man himself, with an estimated net worth of $1 billion. (ter)

Source: Blick