WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — Monday is National Hot Sauce Day.
It was not quite a year ago that many people found store shelves empty of Sriracha hot sauce, frightening so many sauce enthusiasts.
Amid the fiasco, Lola's Fine Hot Sauce decided to fill the need. With the internet ablaze with upset customers and Sriracha prices sky-high, the question remains: Is the shortage over?
In a statement to USA Today, Huy Fong Foods said: "We continue to have a limited supply that continues to affect product availability."
In response, Lola's decided to create and launch its newest product: Lola Racha.
"We heard there was a Sriracha shortage and we said 'What Sriracha shortage?'" said Lola's Fine Hot Sauce CEO Taufeek Shah. "We've got plenty of red jalapenos, so we launched our own Sriracha. Ours is different."
Shah told Local 5 that with the brand's familiarity in Iowa, they made sure to stay true to the family recipe while drawing in Sriracha lovers who may not have tried Lola's before.
"We follow the same strict guidelines we always do. So first of all, Lola makes it and then we all try it," Shah said, referencing the matriarch of the family and the business, Lola. "Really, what we learned was you can put Lola's in just about anything and transform it into anything and it just happened. We're making a ton of Lola's Original so why not make it into Lola Racha? Here we go, Lola Racha baby."
So at least for now, Lola's is curbing any talk of a "shortage" of spicy sauces you can enjoy.