New Green Sriracha Heats Up Competition for Rooster Brand
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Musahi/Huy Fong(NEW YORK) — Could a new green sriracha unseat the famous red rooster sauce as a favorite condiment of spice lovers everywhere?
Midori Green Sriracha, sold by N.Y.-based Musahi foods, calls its sauce a “unique Japanese interpretation of the classic sauce.”
Company president Gideon Sarraf told ABC News his creation is made from green chilies, which he called “a little hotter and more flavorful than jalapenos,” and rice vinegar, among other “natural ingredients.”
Sarraf said his sriracha is also thicker than the famous Huy Fong Foods red sauce.
Sarraf took shipment of the first green sriracha about 30 days ago, he said. It was something he had been making for himself for a while, and he just had a feeling if he could get the word out on the product the “marketing would do itself.” His company is just six months old.
Right he was. Since the first news story on his product appeared on Monday, the response has been tremendous. After getting off to a slow start in the first few weeks, the company is now taking an order every two to three minutes, he said. On Amazon, sales are up 162,000 percent in just a few days, a number, he said, that “doesn’t even make any sense.”
Right now, the sauce is sold online at the company website and on Amazon. Sarraf said it’s available in a few retail stores in New York right now, but that he is in talks with “a ton” of distributors and retailers. He said the goal is to get his product mainstreamed into supermarkets as soon as possible, and said he had no interest in limiting it to gourmet or specialty shops.
Timing may be everything, even when it comes to condiments. Sriracha has made headline after headline in recent months, from December’s speculation about a worldwide sriracha shortage to recent news that one California city has declared a sriracha factory a public nuisance.
A representative for Huy Fong Foods could not be immediately reached on Wednesday by ABC News for comment.
But does Sarraf expect to hear from the makers of the red sriracha? “I haven’t yet, and I very much doubt I will,” he said.
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