Sold-Out Old Bay Hot Sauce Was Project 5 Years In The Making, McCormick Says
BALTIMORE (WJZ/AP) -- If you're like us, you probably missed out on buying the new Old Bay hot sauce when it debuted online Wednesday.
Within an hour of it being on sale, it was sold out.
The Old Bay website also temporarily crashed after eager buyers flooded the site to buy its new hot sauce, the company confirmed in a tweet. The seasoning seller thanked customers for being willing to "try something new" and joked that all the love "may have broken the internet."
The sauce with was described as "tangy with a kick of heat, and that distinctive Chesapeake flavor" is a hot commodity, so much so that's it's already being resold online.
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Customers who snagged some of the precious sauce began reselling it online almost immediately, charging anywhere between $50 to $200. A 10-ounce bottle has a suggested retail price of $3.49, according to the company.
The creation was a marriage five years in the making.
"Hot sauce continues to get more and more popular and Old Bay is always popular, so we thought it would make sense to marry those two things together," said Jill Pratt with McCormick.
As soon as the sauce went up for sale, Old Bay lovers from across the country snapped it up.
"We know our fans are passionate," Pratt said. "We were surprised and overwhelmed by how many people actually wanted this hot sauce."
It was an immediate hit with customers at Jimmy's Seafood.
"It's subtle, but you can still taste the Old Bay in it," one customer said. "It's not too salty."
"I love hot sauce anyway but that's really good," another said.
While there are no plans to make Old Bay Hot Sauce a permanent grocery store staple, the hot sauce will be restocked soon online, and will be on sale over the next month at stores such as Acme, Giant, Food Lion, Martin's, Safeway, Wegmans and Weis, for a limited time, the company said.
If you want to know when it'll be available next, you can also sign up to get an alert.
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