Photo Credit: Sticker Mule Mule Sauce
There have been quite a few shortages lately (food, paper products, etc..). While most of us have become pretty good at rolling with the punches and saying things like, “It is what it is..,” when it comes to food, even the mildest-mannered foodies get their dander up. ESPECIALLY when it has the potential to effect something as delicious as hot sauce.
I mean, how would eggs ever get along without it?!
A shortage I certainly didn’t see coming was the global chile pepper shortage. Recently, Siracha sauce made news for getting rocked pretty hard by the shortage and people everywhere seemed to scramble to find the last bottles on shelves.
The following is a press release from Sticker Mule regarding their popular Mule Sauce. I love the attitude… to take shortages like the ones we’re experiencing and turn them into opportunities. Read on, then head over to Amazon to order some of their Mule Sauce (Amazon link) to try for yourself!
A global chile pepper shortage is decimating current stocks of popular hot sauce brands, like Huy Fong Inc.’s Sriracha sauce, but craft brands like Mule Sauce, the Kick-Ass hot sauce from Sticker Mule, encourage hot sauce fans to use the shortage as an opportunity to try new tasty options.
The sriracha pepper and general chile pepper shortage is a result of changing weather conditions, primarily in western Mexico, New Mexico and California, where droughts, extreme heat and wildfires pervade normal growing conditions. Mule Sauce relies on habanero, yellow Scotch bonnet and bhut jolokia (also known as ghost pepper) to add a fruity, floral heat to its base of red bell pepper mash for its hot sauce. These peppers are grown widespread in a variety of environments, making them readily accessible for Mule Sauce production.
“We have been fortunate to skirt around current supply chain issues related to chile pepper production and maintain a steady stock of ingredients to make our Mule Sauce,” said Sticker Mule founder Anthony Constantino.
The Sriracha shortage (Sriracha accounts for 10 percent of the $2.17 B U.S. hot sauce market) creates an opportunity for brands like Mule Sauce to entice hot sauce aficionados to try a new-to-them sauce and boost sales for craft businesses.
Mule Sauce is quick to adapt to ongoing supply chain issues during the pandemic and credits its nimble start-up roots with Sticker Mule as the reason. “We have carefully gauged our rate of growth to be sure we are never outpacing our abilities to expand. Producing smaller batches of Mule Sauce and basing our production schedule around projected times of higher demand and fluctuations in growing seasons means a fresher hot sauce without preservatives, delivered directly to our customers,” Constantino said. Using multiple trusted purveyors for ingredients – especially chile peppers – mitigates production disasters with a single supply source.
Mule Sauce is already seeing an uptick in sales based on the Sriracha shortage. The addition of ¼-ounce individual easy-open packets of Mule Sauce are popular with the expanded take-out dining market and with outdoor diners during the summer recreation season. Mule Sauce offers piquant heat with notes of floral sweetness and a hint of molasses, measuring 3 out of 5 on the heat intensity scale. It has an impressive cache of 5-star reviews on Amazon, comprising 80 percent of its nearly 800 reviews.
ABOUT MULE SAUCE: Mule Sauce was originally created by the folks at Sticker Mule in 2019 for one of its summer barbeques the company was hosting for its team members. The hot sauce was so delicious that Sticker Mule decided they should share it with the world and launched its hot sauce manufacturing operation and began distributing it online.
