About Empress Hot Sauce

We make Western-style hot sauces using fresh Taiwan-grown produce and chilis. Meet Jane and Denner, two people who left their laptops behind in NYC and moved to Taiwan, Jane’s home country. Every morning they would wander through their neighborhood wet market (菜市場), tasting fresh fruits and getting to know local vendors and farmers. Along the way, they began experimenting with Taiwan’s unique fruits to create hot sauce. Several Irwin Mangos later, they’d created their first hit: a sweet, tangy, and spicy Taiwanese mango hot sauce, and well, the rest is Empress history! We capture Taiwan’s fruits at its peak flavors, just for you We maintain close, long-term relationships with our farmers. Our farmers keep us in the loop on our produce—like how much crop is coming in, the quality—so we can plan our production during prime harvest season and capture when the fruit is at peak ripeness. In fact, Taiwan is nicknamed the "Kingdom of Fruit" and for good reason. Located between tropical and subtropical climates, tropical fruits grow abundantly here throughout the seasons. Paired with Taiwan's unique geography (small in land mass, but rich in topography) we can quickly deliver fresh ingredients from the land right to the factory to turn into Empress hot sauce. Think of our hot sauce as our way of bringing you today’s Taiwan—spicy, fresh, and full of flavor. If food is a love language, then our hot sauce is our love letter from Taiwan (to you!) Read their story