A Business Week profile of the Sriracha Hot Sauce company including its founder, its history and some reasons why its been so successful.
My own introduction to the fabled hot sauce was fairly typical – when I started working at the Sask Publishers Group, my boss took me for Vietnamese food (is it possible I never had Vietnamese food all through college? Maybe – I was pretty sheltered! Or, if I did, I’d never bothered with the sauces.) Anyhow, I followed the lead of the other people at the table – I ordered rice vermicelli with meat, I poured the fish sauce on it. But instead of squeezing a small dollop of the red sauce in the ketchup squeeze bottle on the side of my dish like they did, I squirted a huge amount all over my food. And of course, I nearly died from the heat and could barely finish my meal, tears running down my face, constantly blowing my running nose.
I’m not so sheltered anymore and the irony is that today, I practically eat the stuff like, well, like it’s ketchup! 😉