In December 1978, David Tran, then 33, left his home in Vietnam with 100 ounces of gold. Worth $20,000 at the time, or about $90,000 in today’s term

How Vietnamese Refugee David Tran Became America's First Hot Sauce Billionaire

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2023-03-18 00:00:03

In December 1978, David Tran, then 33, left his home in Vietnam with 100 ounces of gold. Worth $20,000 at the time, or about $90,000 in today’s terms, the precious metal was stashed in cans of condensed milk to evade the attention of Vietnam’s Communist authorities. Tran traveled by freighter to Hong Kong, where he spent eight months at a refugee camp, then moved to Boston for six months before settling in Los Angeles.

Once in L.A., he sold a chunk of the gold and bought a 2,500-square-foot building in the city’s Chinatown. He set up his business, Huy Fong—named after the freighter he took—to make a hot sauce he called Sriracha, after a recipe originally from Thailand.

More than four decades later, Sriracha has been on Survivor, the International Space Station and dining tables worldwide. Its bottles, with their rooster logo and green squeeze cap, are in nearly one in ten U.S. kitchens, according to market research firm NPD Group. It ranks third in the $1.5 billion (revenue) American hot sauce market behind Tabasco, owned by the McIlhenny family since 1868, and Frank’s RedHot, part of publicly traded spice giant McCormick & Co.

Today Huy Fong is worth $1 billion, based on estimated sales of $131 million in 2020, according to research firm IBISWorld. That makes Tran, 77, who owns the entire company, the nation’s only hot sauce billionaire. And while some of Sriracha’s competitors have been snapped up in recent years—McCormick purchased Mexican hot sauce brand Cholula for $800 million in November 2020—Tran has no plans to sell. He intends to pass the business on to his two children—William, 47 and Yassie, 41—both of whom work there.