Sriracha shortage sees sauce prices spike to over $70 a bottle

The shortage of sriracha hot chili sauce is causing prices to soar to over $70 a bottle on the secondary market. Yahoo Finance Live discusses the shortage and how resellers are taking advantage of it.

Video transcript

- All right, guys, I also want to talk about a story that I'm following. And it's kind of sad news for people out there who are sriracha fans. And I'm sure, if you are, then you are very in tune with what is going on right now. But this shortage, it is going on-- it's been going on for quite some time, over a year. It's still with us today.

But why we're talking about it, is just how much people are paying to get their hands on a bottle of sriracha. It was written up that it was what? People are selling it for 70 bucks on eBay, over 100 bucks on Amazon. Really speaks to one, the demand out there. But two, the fact that this has been an issue for far too long for so many of those--

- I'm kind of obsessed with the secondary market concept of it. I love that people see shortage headlines, or you can't get x product now, and people's move is to go online and buy a ton of it and then try and sell it to people. I think it's so funny that this has become like a thing now that is so popular with Amazon and those third-party sellers, that you don't realize--

- Access is easy.

- Yeah, it's just another person selling it to you. Someone else was just smarter. They bought something you wanted, and now they're trading it to you at a high premium, right. It's like fun times--

- --at Amazon. Like, you kind of need to do your shop thing a little bit on Amazon to make sure you're getting the best deals, because that could happen. But just to put this all in perspective, a 17 ounce bottle of sriracha is around 5 bucks. So the fact that people are paying $100, $200--

- It is good sauce, though.

- Is there--

- This specific sriracha is good.

- Is there something else? Like I feel like this is a good moment for like a chef to come out and--

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

- That doesn't taste like sriracha. Sriracha has a little bit more of a consistency--

- I would much rather--

- --to it.

- I would much rather suck it up and just eat Frank's Red hot sauce and pay 70 bucks for a bottle of sriracha. It doesn't taste that different.

- I agree. I agree. I agree. I'm not going out and buying it.

- But it's also interesting just how this is affecting restaurants too, right. So many restaurants that do have sriracha bottles on their tables, they're actually keeping a very, very close eye on it because they've started to notice theft of these sriracha bottles.

There was one restaurant that said that they started the year with over 300 bottles, right now they're down to 100. Just because so many customers are stealing them, given the shortage.

- Can you imagine going to a restaurant and having your kids look out for people, and just putting your sriracha bottle--

- I have taken a cup from a restaurant one time. I really liked the design.

- Shrinking restaurants, it'll be the story. [INAUDIBLE]

- But it is just amazing, when you think about just the secondary market and how much people are trying to charge. And there must be a buyer out there somewhere that's willing to pay-- maybe not 70 bucks for a bottle, but willing to pay a heck of a lot more than 5 bucks.

- --some people did buy the $70 ones.

- Really?

- Like, I think one of the eBay ones, that was an actual receipt that someone bought.

- Wow.

- But the 120-- I haven't seen the 120 go yet. This is-- I'll be spending my holiday weekend following this market.

- Top story of the year.

- Yeah. Hopefully, we'll see the shortage end very soon.