huy fong sriracha factory tour

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Touring the Sriracha Factory of Huy Fong Foods in Irwindale

If you have been to a Chinese food restaurant, then you have no doubt seen/experienced the spicy goodness that is Sriracha. The iconic plastic bottle with the rooster on the front and the green top is one of the most popular condiments in the USA, and it is produced right here in Southern California. I got a chance to take the tour of the facility, and you can read all about it below.

• Free – Book here , but it books up pretty far in advance
• Location: 4800 Azusa Canyon Rd, Irwindale, CA 91706
• This information was from my visit in 2017

Getting There

The Huy Fong Factory is located right off the 10 Freeway. It is in an industrial area since the building is over 650,000 square feet. There is plenty of parking for visitors so you shouldn’t have trouble finding a place to park.

Here is a video I made of the tour.

Chili Grinding

Once a year, for four consecutive weekends, the Sriracha factory opens for chili grinding. This open house is a ton of fun, and if you get a chance to go, then do it. It feels like a party when you go with music, lion dancers, food, and free gifts. Here is a video I made of my time at the chili grinding in 2017

I arrived about 10 minutes early for my tour and was ushered into a large room where they had a movie playing with the history of the company. Here are a few things I learned:

• Huy Fong is the name of the ship that brought the owner over from Vietnam, so he named his company after it since it brought him to a new life.
• They use 100 million pounds of chili in a season, and it comes from only one farm.
• They have been in business for 36 years and just sell to wholesalers. The company hasn’t added a new customer for 11 years since they are kept at full demand.

This room also had a lot of pictures from how Sriracha has connected with popular culture over the years.

There is a cartoon from The Oatmeal and even a photo of Sriracha floating in zero gravity on the international space station.

After hanging out in here, the tour began with hairnets and jumping on a golf cart with the license plate “hot one.” The golf cart took us around to the back of the factory, and we started the 25 minutes of walking through the world of sriracha. My tour guide was named Claudia, and she was great!

During the chili crushing season (fall), there is a ton more going on then when I went, so keep an eye out for those open houses.

The tour takes you around the factory, and you still see the process, but it is mostly focused on the bottling aspect.

Our guide brought a microphone, but the factory is loud and it is pretty hard to hear. This didn’t take away from the fun though, as it is a well laid out tour that takes you to the main aspects of the line.

The best part is the bottling area, where you see the small bottles that are expanded to their normal size and then filled.

From here, the bottles are stamped, and the iconic green top is added.

Next, they get put into a box, and then the boxes get stacked and wrapped to prepare for shipment.

The processing line can produce up to 10,000 bottles an hour per lane, and there are nine lanes.

We then loaded back into the golf cart and were driven through the holding area, where there are tens of thousands of blue buckets filled with the crushed chilis just waiting to be turned into Sriracha.

One of the things I learned is that there are many makers of Sriracha, but Huy Fong Foods are most recognized. The name is not trademarked, but the rooster and the green cap of the bottle are. When you have a Sriracha burger at a restaurant, it is most likely not Huy Fong Foods Sriracha unless you see one of their trademarks.

The Gift Shop

After the tour ends, you will make your way to the gift shop where you are given a free small bottle of Sriracha. You can also purchase gifts from the wide range of shirts, pillows, and other funky stuff they have.

The gift shop is sold at cost, so they do not make a profit on anything here, and because of that, the prices are great. I got a shirt for $10, which was impressive.

I am happy that I finally got a chance to visit this fun Southern California spot. It is hard to beat a free tour where you get a bottle of Sriracha at the end, and I suggest you add this spot to your list of places to visit in California.

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Take a Tour of the Sriracha Factory in California

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Here's a look inside the headline-making Huy Fong Foods Sriracha factory in Irwindale, CA. Eater recently took one of the public tours the factory now offers and had a brief chat with founder David Tran about the troubles his company has had with the city council and in court .

The tour itself covered the grounds of the company's massive Irwindale production facility, much of which was done from the comfort of a Huy Fong Foods-branded golf cart. According to the tour guide, the building is a whopping 650,000 square-feet. 40 customer-routed trucks depart from the factory each day bringing unthinkable amounts of endorphin-creating hot sauces across the country.

The tour followed the production narrative and, as explained by our guide (who was wearing a Sriracha t-shirt), it starts when chilis are picked nearby during the harvest and placed into giant hoppers outside of the building. They're washed three times, then ground, and then mixed with unspecified preservatives. They are never cooked. This "mash" is stored in blue drums until it's time to make sauce from it.

Chili grinding season begins in August, and the mash created in that four month period provides the base for all the Huy Fong sauces made year round. This mash is then sent to a second mixing room, where additional ingredients are added based on whichever sauce is being made. Huy Fong produces its own plastic bottles on site, which are silkscreened with their iconic rooster logo, filled, capped, and sealed. Packed into pallets and boxes by a "robot," the bottles must then be held for 35 days per the DOH. The tour guide said a DOH rep comes and tests samples from the batches every week.

While there was no grinding taking place at the time of Eater's tour, there were workers opening drums of chili mash. Fragrant? Yes. Irritating to the eyes, nose, or throat? Not in the slightest. There were also no perceivable odors in the office space above the factory or outside of the factory, where workers were eating lunch from a food truck on campus. (Eater asked another tour guide about whether the pepper smells ever bothered her and she said it didn't, but that "during grinding season you can smell it.")

People on the tour didn't leave empty handed. Each person was given a 9 ounce novelty bottle of Sriracha with the tag "I put Sriracha on my Sriracha" plus a handout called " The Big Lie " with quotes about how awful the odors from the factory are.

Following the tour, Eater had the chance to sit and chat with founder David Tran in a conference room on the second floor of the factory. Wearing a shirt that said "Srirachaholic," Tran told Eater that while there certainly have been plenty of politicians eager to see his factory move, he's not keen on the idea. " Why should I move? " he said. "I'm a citizen. The USA is my country. This building belongs to me."

He also told Eater that despite sending two invitations to visit the factory on a tour, the city council members have never visited. When asked why he thinks his factory has become a target for the city council he quickly answered, "Money. Nothing else."

Go, have a look around:

· All Sriracha Coverage on Eater [-E-]

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Huy Fong Foods Sriracha Factory Tour

Huy Fong Foods 4800 Azusa Canyon Rd Irwindale, CA 91706 FREE Reserved Tours are offered 10AM or 2pm Monday – Friday Chili Grinding tours which occur in the Fall. Book Tours 

Sriracha is the #1 chili sauce in America and they offer free tours!  The tour begins with a series of videos explaining how this versatile product was created.  David Tran the CEO/founder of this sauce was a refugee from Vietnam.  He named his product after the boat that took him to US.  His recipe chili sauce was influenced by a town in Thailand called Sri Racha.  The rooster represents the chinese zodiac year when he was born.  When he first began selling the sauce, he’d go around his neighborhood selling in recycled bottles.  Demand peaked and the rest is history.

Once the videos are over, you put on a hairnet and take a shuttle tour inside the factory.  The tour guide will walk you around different areas such as where the chili sauce is stored, packaged, and created. You can take as many pictures as you like but you cannot bring any bags with you.

At the end of the tour, you get a free sample at the gift shop.  You have a choice among the 3 products that Huy Fong make (the normal sriracha, the sambak olek, and chili garlic sauce)  and can purchase additional themed products.

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Time Out tours the Sriracha factory

We discover how Sriracha hot sauce is made, what founder David Tran wears to work and whether the factory really smells that bad

By now, fans of cult-favorite Sriracha hot sauce may feel like their emotions are being toyed with. First, complaints from the city of Irwindale in late October about strong odors coming from the Huy Fong Foods factory implied an imminent shutdown, followed by the very real threat of a Sriracha shortage . Then in February, the factory began offering free tours ; just last week, the city council of Irwindale voted to offer the factory a one-month reprieve to work with air quality regulators. Time Out took advantage of the company's good fortune and stopped by the factory for a tour.

Our tour guide, Judith Jaramillo, has been working at Huy Fong Foods for a year, and began by giving us hair nets and strict instructions not to photograph the lobby. Since the free tours were first offered, Jaramillo has been leading four to six tour groups each day, although most have been with companies interested in the hot sauce. She doesn't like Sriracha—she doesn't even like chilis in general—but she rattled off facts like a pro: The Irwindale factory is 650,000 square feet; the one in Rosemead is 68,000; the company only uses jalapeños from California. The factory is sparse and relatively calm, mainly because it is not chili season, which occurs from August to November. To create the fiery hot sauce, chilis are dumped into hoppers, then sorted and transported through tubes into a larger warehouse, where they are mixed with vinegar and salt and, later on, sugar and garlic. We expected a factory filled with employees in Sriracha-stained aprons, but in reality, this is mostly a machine-run operation, churning out 18,000 bottles per hour. The 40-50 workers per shift seem to simply aid the giant contraptions that fill, sort, package and cap the spicy chili sauce used on everything from egg dishes to bowls of ramen .

On our way back from the warehouse, we ran into David Tran, who founded Huy Fong Foods in 1986. "It's so simple; the machines do everything" he said, pointing at the warehouse. He wore a tongue-in-cheek Sriracha shirt that read, "Hands off my" followed by a rooster image (Tran was born in the year of the rooster). Tran has a hand in every aspect of the operation, from the design of the blue barrels that store the Sriracha to the machinery that he helped modify. "He always has to be working," said Jaramillo.

When the 30-minute tour finished, we were shuttled back to the lobby and given a short questionnaire, asking about the odor of the factory (we noticed very little, but agreed that chili season is a whole different story). Then Jaramillo handed us a 9-ounce bottle of Sriracha, thanked us for coming, and turned to the next group waiting, hair nets in hand.

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• INTELLIGENT TRAVEL

Sriracha: Hot Sauce House Tour

After a fiery controversy over spicy pepper fumes in 2013, the Huy Fong Sriracha factory , located 30 minutes outside of Los Angeles in Irwindale (population approximately 1,400), cleaned up its act—as well as its air—and now fuels the condiment’s cult status with facility tours.

Sriracha is a generic term, named after a port city in Thailand where the sauce was supposedly born. Most Americans squeeze the green-capped Huy Fong version, created by Vietnamese immigrant David Tran using fresh California-grown   jalapeños.

In fact, Tran fled communist Vietnam on a freighter named Huy Fong in 1979, and went on to name his company after the boat that led him to his   new life in the United States.

Tran, who once sold an early version of his   handmade hot sauce in recycled baby jars in Vietnam, never anticipated that his spicy chili paste   would inspire dedicated cookbooks, food festivals, and an affinity among astronauts in space. Though his company produces three sauces, each sharing the same base—Sambal Oelek and Chili Garlic—sriracha is the most popular by far.

View the behind-the-scenes process on the factory tour, from crushing peppers to constructing bottles—just don’t breathe in too deeply.

Christine Blau   is a researcher at   National Geographic Traveler   magazine on a life-long   hunt   for authentic local flavor. Follow Christine on Twitter   @Chris_Blau   and on Instagram   @ChristineBlau .  

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You're Not a True Sriracha Lover Until You Visit Chili Wonka's Factory

It's similar to the willy wonka factory, just spicier., disha samaiyar, ishaan pathak, get spoon university delivered to you.

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Saturday morning had not been kind to me so far. I woke up with a terrible hangover, to find that the friend that was supposed to be sleeping over was nowhere in sight. My roommates soon told me that while I had made myself comfortable in bed and knocked out, they had stayed up taking care of my increasingly sick (read: too much vodka) friend. They were not happy. 

Now, an hour's drive later across Los Angeles, me and two other Spoonies are in Irwindale (essentially the middle of nowhere), waiting in line at the gates of Huy Fong Foods—the huge 650,000 sq. ft Sriracha factory. A hint of spice hangs in the air as we walk in, which does an amazing job of teasing out my hangover and picking me up.

Shipping and Idols

Huy Fong Foods made the sensible decision to introduce the more boring segment first, so as we walk into the factory, we are given a handy-dandy tour brochure and are faced by a room full of boxes of packaged Sriracha bottles, ready to be shipped all around the world (but mainly to Canada).

The monotony of this room is diluted by cheeky photos of the founder David Tran wearing a few shirts that will hopefully make my Christmas stockings.

A Waterfall of Jalapenos

The main ingredient in Sriracha is red jalapeños that are trucked in fresh daily. The chili grinding season only lasts about four months out of the year, and we realized that ours was the last group of the year that would be allowed to visit this facility until next September's open house. Woop-dee-dee. 

To deal with the massive amounts brought in everyday, 30-40 trucks each unload 21 tons of chillies into a huge metal basin. A literal waterfall of chillies. These chillies are then gently rolled onto hopper of a conveyor belt.

Let's Make Sauce

The conveyor belt feeds the jalapeños into machines that wash and then grind them to pulp. Workers add salt, vinegar and other spices to create the chili base for the three main sauces produced: Sriracha, Chili Garlic, and Sambal Oelek. The sauce is then fed into giant 55 gallon blue barrels for storage.

Bottle on Bottles on Bottles

The next part of the facility makes the famous green topped bottles we all know and adds the sauce to them. Huy Fong makes all their plastic bottles in house rather than buying them from elsewhere which is pretty darn cool.

There's something mesmerizing about this: the bottles inflating, machines labeling them, filling them up, screwing on the green caps, sending them through a heat induction sealer that seals the bottle, and then laser coding each bottle with a production code and a best-before date. It really does make me feel like robots will take over the world.  

These bottles are then boxed and organized based on where they will be shipped to by automatic case erectors.

Walking out of the factory, we are hit by the bright California sun and handed a bunch of Sriracha-flavored food, including popcorn, chips, ice cream and a turnover. My stomach welcomed all of it.

Then we got in line for the Rooster Room gift shop, which even as someone who does not like gifts shops, I highly recommend. There's every sort of merchandise available from onesies, pillows, cheeky shirts ("Cock Sauce—handle carefully"), pajamas, to shot glasses and Sriracha-flavored ketchup and mustard. Oh, and boxers too. But those you can't see. Everything was so affordable that we had to go wild and none of us walked out empty-handed.

So the next time, you want to visit Los Angeles and you want something new and novel to do, take a flight out here in September and let the spicy smells of Huy Fong Foods soothe your hangover from the night before. It's completely worth it.   

Spice up your fries.

Chili crisp is the condiment that will get you through the sriracha shortage., product review, nobody asked for this, but it needed to be known..

RoadsideAmerica.com Your Online Guide to Offbeat Tourist Attractions

Attraction:

Tour the Sriracha Hot Sauce Factory

Irwindale, California

Sriacha is a popular Southeast Asian-style hot chili sauce, manufactured in the US since 1980 (and named after a city in Thailand). Some Irwindale locals wanted to shut down the Huy Fong Foods plant because of the noxious smell (there were rumors it was manufacturing tear gas). The factory re-ventilated, and the city dropped its lawsuit in 2014, so the sauce making continues. The formerly top secret spicy condiments factory now welcomes public tours.

Visitors board 14-seat golf cart mini-buses for part of the half hour tour, and samples are provided. There's a souvenir shop called The Rooster Room. The best (and smelliest) time to visit is chili-grinding season, mid-Sep. to late Oct. Tours must be scheduled in advance by calling.

Huy Fong Foods

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Take a Tour of the Leading Sriracha Factory

By kirstin fawcett | oct 9, 2015.

Die-hard sriracha fans know that a woman named Thanom Chakkapak invented the tongue-scorching topping in—you guessed it—Si Racha, Thailand, during the 1930s. However, if you’re eating a version of the spicy condiment in America, a company called Huy Fong Foods is likely responsible for that burning sensation in your mouth.

Ever been curious how the condiment is made ? Swing by Huy Fong and see for yourself. In 2014, the company began offering free public tours of its Irwindale, California-based facilities amidst a large number of complaints from locals about the factory's pungent smell and air pollution. 

Although visitors are welcome by appointment year-round, the best time for sriracha enthusiasts to visit is reportedly during fall, also known as " chili-grinding season ." During this period, chili peppers are mashed into a mixture that will eventually serve as the base of all the company's products (this includes sambal oelek and chili garlic sauces, in addition to sriracha).

Onlookers can watch as truckloads of chili peppers are delivered to the factory. There, they’re dumped onto a conveyor belt, ground, and processed into sauce, before being poured into the brand’s iconic rooster-label bottles and packaged for distribution. Visitors might also get a chance to meet the label's CEO, David Tran, who greets patrons at the door.

Sadly, chili-grinding season ends on October 17—meaning you only have about a week left to take an eye-watering tour before next September. However, if you act quickly, you can schedule a reservation online. 

[h/t Paste , Los Angeles Times ]

Inside the Only Factory in the World That Makes Sriracha Sauce

The first step in making Sriracha! A video posted by Benny Luo (@bennyluo) on Jul 28, 2016 at 12:10am PDT

These peppers are about to go into the grinder to start the process of making Sriracha A video posted by Benny Luo (@bennyluo) on Jul 28, 2016 at 12:24am PDT

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Unconventional

Hot sauce master David Tran arrived in California in 1979 from Vietnam, humble and hungry but in need of a spicy additive worthy of his Pho soup. He quickly set out on a mission to produce one to share with his Southeast Asian community of Los Angeles, which was also suffering a hot sauce drought. Within a few months, his first chili sauce “Pepper Saté Sauce” was born and Tran began selling it door to door to local restaurants and markets. He named his company “Huy Fong Foods” in remembrance of the old Panamanian freighter, the “Huey Fong”, which carried Tran out of Vietnam, and chose his zodiac animal, the rooster, as his logo.

The Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce we all know and love was first sold in 1983, made from fresh, red Jalapeño chili peppers, vinegar, garlic, salt and sugar. Huy Fong Foods has never advertised their products, they simply let the sauce’s legend spread by word of mouth, and spread it has, like wildfire, now ranking as one of the world’s leaders in the hot sauce industry.

“Run free, my child, and spread the sweet, spicy gospel of truth.”

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Sriracha factory tour - Huy Fong Foods

• United States    
• California (CA)    
• Irwindale    
• Irwindale - Things to Do    
• Huy Fong Foods

Interesting free tour!! Can't wait to go again so I can enjoy the experience with more... read more

The Huy Fong Foods tour was really well-organized. It engages every sense. The origin story is... read more

Sriracha factory tour

I was not expecting much, but was super surprised and blown away by the end. The history of the beginnings of the company and founder is truly an example of the American Dream, where anyone can accomplish amazing things so long as you work hard. My heart goes out to Mr. Tran, who had (and still has) the a business model that is more concerned with the quality of their products than anything. I am still trying to process that Huy Fong Foods only does three products, yet does them all to perfection. I will definitely take the tour again, hopefully around the time of pepper harvest so that I can witness things on a different level. If you are anything of a spicy food enthusiast (like me), I would recommend taking a trip to visit the factory and take the tour. If you have an interest in business startups, this is an awesome example of how to do things right. Mr Tran and Huy Fong Foods will continue to have my business with their Sriracha sauce, chili-garlic sauce and chili sauce.

We use their products and have for over 20 years but we are now more loyal customers after hearing David Tran’s story and his business model. The tour was fascinating and we were amazed at the efficiency & cleanliness of the facility. My husband is a retired Marine who has exacting standards and he was extremely impressed & his comment was “The military could use them as an example of how to do things right!” The gift shop was fun and we truly appreciate the gift of Huy Fong products at the end of the tour....thank you!!

To get on a tour, you have to get a reservation online at least a month before. Prior to the tour, you watch a short video of how the founder started. It’s amazing how he grew this operation internationally from his humble beginnings as a refugee who used to be a farmer from Vietnam. After watching the video, you ride in a tram to view the factory operation. When we went there though, the trams were not running, so ended up on a walking tour which I think is better as we see the Operation closer. It’s surprising how they keep the factory clean. After the tour, the guides take the group to the gift store and each visitor gets a free small bottle if Sriracha sauce or a jar of chili paste. It’s so generous of them to give away their products and the employees are nice.

We went Oct 25th for the tour, we were visiting LA for the week and my wife and brother-in-law love the Sriracha sauce for several years. I thought it was a great option to get to know the history and the warehouse where the Sriracha is being made. The employees from the Security guard to the tour guide are amazing people. First part of the tour is a 20 mins video that tells the history and fun facts about the sauce and the founder of the company. After that the tour guide (forgot her name) drove us to the other side of the facilities and explained to us and showed the facilities. After all questions were answered and got to see the place and know about the vision of the founder we went for the gift shop that is really a bargain on almost everything. I am not a fan of spicy sauce or food, in fact I do not eat Sriracha but had a great time on this tour and even got a shirt on the store. :) Highly recommended and..... THE TOUR IS FREE!!! Just make a reservation to guarantee your spot and be on time.

A fun and informative tour on our favourite sriracha chili sauce! The free sample and the gift shop with very reasonable prices was the cherry on top! Definitely worth a trip but book early. They only offer tours on weekdays.

Truth be told, the only reason to partake on the free Huy Fong Foods tour is to visit the only factory that produces their 3 products. Actually, I only thought they only had 2 products and only learned of sambal oelek (chili paste without garlic) at our visit. Although the factory plant is massive, the operation still has a family business feel to it. Viewing the wild selection of Sriracha themed T shirts in the gift shop is worth the trip.

Huy Fong Foods, Inc.

Known worldwide for our hot chili sauces.

CHILI GARLIC

SAMBAL OELEK