Original Sriracha maker says he doesn’t need trademark despite popular spinoffs

LOS ANGELES – Wander down almost any supermarket aisle and it’s easy to spot one of the food industry’s hottest fads. Sriracha, the fiery red Asian chili sauce, has catapulted from a cult hit to flavor du jour, infusing burgers, potato chips, candy, vodka and even lip balm.

That would seem like a boon for the man who made the sauce a household name. Except for one glaring omission.

David Tran, a Vietnamese refugee who built the pepper empire from nothing, never trademarked the term, opening the door for others to develop their own sauce or seasoning and call it Sriracha.

That’s given some of the biggest names in the food business such as Heinz, Frito-Lay, Subway and Jack in the Box license to bank off the popularity of a condiment once named Bon Appetit magazine’s ingredient of the year.

Restaurant chains and candy and snack makers aren’t buying truckloads of Tran’s green-capped condiment emblazoned with the rooster logo. Nor are they paying Tran a dime in royalties to use the word “Sriracha.”

“In my mind, it’s a major misstep,” said Steve Stallman, president of Stallman Marketing, a food business consultancy. “Getting a trademark is a fundamental thing.”

Tran, who now operates his family-owned company Huy Fong Foods out of a 650,000-square-foot facility outside Los Angeles, doesn’t see his failure to secure a trademark as a missed opportunity. He said it’s free advertising for a company that’s never had a marketing budget. It’s unclear whether he’s losing out: Sales of the original Sriracha have grown from $60 million to $80 million in the last two years alone.

“Everyone wants to jump in now,” said Tran, 70. “We have lawyers come and say ‘I can represent you and sue’ and I say ‘No. Let them do it.’ ”

Tran is so proud of the condiment’s popularity that he maintains a daily ritual of searching the Internet for the latest Sriracha spinoff.

He believes all the exposure will lead more consumers to taste the original spicy, sweet concoction – which was inspired by flavors from across Southeast Asia and named after a coastal city in Thailand. Tran also said he was discouraged to seek a trademark because it would have been difficult getting one named after a real-life location.

That hasn’t stopped competitors from scratching their heads.

Tony Simmons, chief executive of the McIlhenny Co., makers of Tabasco, said Tran’s Sriracha sauce was the “gold standard” for Sriracha-style sauces, which has largely come to mean any dressing that packs a piquant punch of chili paste, vinegar, garlic and sugar.

Simmons was reassured by his lawyers that Tabasco would have no problem releasing a similar sauce using the name Sriracha.

“We spend enormous time protecting the word ‘Tabasco’ so that we don’t have exactly this problem,” Simmons said. “Why Mr. Tran did not do that, I don’t know.”

There are now a slew of sauces on the market labeled Sriracha, including variations by Frank’s Red Hot, Kikkoman and Lee Kum Kee.