San Francisco Sriracha lovers are swiping bottles of the once-cheap condiment from native eating places as a final resort amid the nationwide chili pepper scarcity.
Bay Area eateries are struggling to maintain bottles of the recent sauce on their tables due to prospects who can’t discover Sriracha at any grocery retailer.
“They actually disappear,” Mariel Edwards, the operations supervisor of Oakland-based Senor Sisig’s, advised SFGATE, calling the thefts “loopy.”
“We haven’t seen folks take them, however there’s a bottle that may go lacking … It’s humorous how, like, they’ll simply not be on the desk anymore.”
Other prospects with arguably stronger morals have additionally known as the institution and requested whether or not they might purchase bottles from the store immediately, Edwards stated.
Most main grocery chains within the Bay Area ran out of their Sriracha inventory final month within the wake of a chili pepper stock scarcity, making a wild demand that has led shopkeepers to boost costs a whopping 651%, SFGATE reported.
The now-scare bottles, which used to promote for roughly $3.99, can now solely be discovered within the metropolis’s Koreana Plaza and are going for $29.99.
The few Bay Area supermarkets that haven’t but run out of Sriracha have restricted customers to buy simply two bottles at a time.
Sriracha provide has been quickly lowering since Huy Fong Foods, Inc. — the nation’s main sriracha sauce producer — introduced in April that the spice scarcity would closely affect its merchandise.
The California-based firm began experiencing a scarcity of chili pepper stock again in July 2020, which was worsened in latest months due to poor climate situations that decimated crops.
