Inside the El Pato Factory, Home to LA’s Century-Old Hot Sauce Company | Eater LA
"A 115-year-old, family-run manufacturing complex on Mission Road along the banks of the LA River that produces the instantly recognizable brightly colored cans featuring a hand-drawn mallard. The plant turns out salsas, vinegars, mustards, peppers and pickled items, with the tomato-based yellow can—spiced with cascabel chile—serving as the flagship hot sauce and accounting for roughly half of the company’s millions in annual sales, followed by the green and red cans and other pantry staples. The block-sized site, complete with duck-painted storage tanks, front offices, loading docks and humming machinery, is staffed by a largely union workforce of about 70 people and overseen by longtime family leadership; its products include white vinegar supplied to McDonald’s locations west of the Mississippi and across the Pacific Rim and the mustard used by In-N-Out since 1948. During the pandemic the facility maintained production with enhanced safety measures, paid leave for older workers and contact tracing, and despite a drop in restaurant wholesale business reported one of its strongest financial years in recent memory. Beyond stores, the cans have a cultural life of their own—repurposed as planters, celebrated on social media and even immortalized in tattoos—cementing the operation’s status as a pantry staple in many Southern California households." - Farley Elliott