Fly By Jing: How a Sichuan Chili Crisp Went From Kickstarter to Costco's Shelves
Walk into a Costco or a Target in the United States today and you can find a jar of Sichuan chili crisp, made in Chengdu, sitting a few feet from the ketchup. Eight years ago that jar did not exist, and the category it now leads barely registered with American shoppers outside the Asian grocery aisle.
The brand behind it is Fly By Jing. It started in 2018 as a crowdfunding campaign by a Chengdu-born founder, Jing Gao, and has since become the No. 1 chili crisp brand in the US, sold in more than 12,000 retail locations and backed by a US$12 million Series B. What makes it worth a closer look is not the scale. It is the method. Gao refused to soften the flavor for Western palates and instead spent her energy translating the story around the product.
WHO: Who Buys Fly By Jing, and Why Pay US$10 for Chili Sauce
Fly By Jing's customer is not the person who reaches for the cheapest bottle of hot sauce. Jing Gao has described her target audience as diverse-minded, flavor-loving professionals in cities like New York and LA, people who are health-conscious, curious about global cuisines and willing to pay a premium for something that feels like a genuine taste experience rather than a condiment.
That profile matters because it explains the brand's pricing. Each product sells for roughly US$10 to US$15, several times the price of a mass-market chili sauce. Fly By Jing is not competing on heat or price; it is selling a more complex Sichuan flavor, and a story, to a buyer who treats the pantry as part of their identity. The brand leans on this directly: the target is someone who puts hot sauce on everything but has never experienced the tingle of Sichuan peppercorn.
WHAT: What It Sells, a Jar of Chengdu Street Flavor
The flagship is the Sichuan Chili Crisp, a chunky, oil-based condiment loaded with texture: fermented black beans, fragrant Sichuan peppercorns, aged chili oil. Unlike typical US hot sauces, which are mostly heat and vinegar, this one is built on 18 all-natural ingredients with no preservatives or MSG. The key pepper, a heritage Erjingtiao chili, and a 'Tribute Pepper' Sichuan peppercorn are sourced from the Sichuan countryside, and everything is manufactured in Chengdu.
That sourcing is the product's real moat. The signature ma la tingle comes from a compound in Sichuan peppercorn that activates touch neurons rather than pain receptors, a sensation no domestic chili oil replicates. Fly By Jing has expanded from the original chili crisp into about ten products, including a Zhong dumpling sauce, a mala spice mix and, more recently, ready-to-cook noodles, all at a premium tier. The brand is B Corp certified and vegan, and Jing Gao's 2023 cookbook, The Book of Sichuan Chili Crisp, won a 2024 James Beard Media Award in the Visuals category.
WHY: How It Sells, From Kickstarter to Whole Foods and Costco
Fly By Jing's go-to-market was deliberately grassroots. It launched in 2018 through Kickstarter, raising about US$120,000 from early backers rather than going straight into retail. Gao's bet was that crowdfunding would find her the trendsetters, foodies and creators who would share the story with their communities. It worked, and the campaign became the highest-funded craft food project on the platform at the time.
The second act came in 2020, when the pandemic home-cooking boom and a New York Times endorsement sent demand surging. The brand leaned into a deliberately simple positioning: it did not adapt the sauce to American tastes, it adapted the story around it, showing how the chili crisp could pair with pizza, burgers and salads to break down the barrier of unfamiliarity. After building the direct-to-consumer base, Fly By Jing moved into retail, starting with Whole Foods and Target in 2021 to borrow their premium halo, then adding Costco, Kroger and Albertsons, and finally more than 2,000 Walmart stores in 2024. By 2025 the brand was in more than 12,000 US retail locations and online through Amazon, and in 2024 it became the No. 1 chili crisp brand in the US, outpacing ketchup and mayonnaise in category growth.
The financials back the narrative. Fly By Jing has grown into what Shopify has described as an eight-figure brand, and in March 2023 it closed a US$12 million Series B led by existing investor Prelude Growth Partners, with participation from Pendulum, to fund broader distribution and new categories. The strategy has a clear throughline: own the DTC relationship first, then use mainstream retail as a credibility engine, never the other way around.
HERSTORY: Her Story, From Chengdu Tech Worker to Chili Crisp Founder
Jing Gao was born in Chengdu and raised in Europe and Canada. She spent about a decade back in Sichuan working in technology, and she has said she started studying Chinese cooking as a way to reconnect with her identity. That search took her through training under a master chef in Chengdu, opening a restaurant, and eventually hosting a traveling pop-up supper club around the world, where her homemade sauces kept drawing attention.
The brand name carries that story. 'Fly' is a nod to Chengdu's famed 'fly restaurants', the hole-in-the-wall spots so delicious they attract diners like flies, and 'By Jing' is her personal signature. In her telling, she did not set out to represent any one tradition or taste; she set out to make her own expression of Sichuan flavor, and to show that Chinese food deserves more respect than the cheap, generic image it often carries in the West. That personal voice is the brand's emotional core, the reason it reads as a founder story rather than a food company.
The story is not without friction. Because Fly By Jing manufactures entirely in China, it has had to navigate US-China trade policy and tariffs; Gao has said the tariffs hit small, independent brands like hers disproportionately. Her answer has been to keep the sourcing honest and the story personal, betting that authenticity, and the category's openness, will carry the brand further.
Fly By Jing's playbook is easy to summarize and hard to copy. Keep the product uncompromising, source it where the flavor comes from, and do the translation work in the story, the pairings and the packaging rather than in the recipe. Crowdfunding found the first believers, DTC turned them into a community, and only then was mainstream retail invited in, as an amplifier rather than a launchpad.
The open question is what happens as the category fills up. Chili crisp now sits on the shelves of every major US grocer, retailers' own-label versions have followed, and tariffs on China-made goods cut into an independent brand's margin in a way they never touch a large company. Fly By Jing's answer so far has been to stay personal: one founder, one region, one flavor it refuses to dilute. For Chinese food and consumer brands looking at the US, that may be the most useful lesson of all. The market did not need a milder Sichuan. It needed someone to explain the real one.
Double V is a cross-border operating partner and intelligence house for emerging consumer brands, based in Hong Kong and Shenzhen. We help brands connect China and the world through three businesses: Brand Operation (marketing and distribution for brands on retainer), Brand Incubation (sister company Glam Infinite and our own-built brands), and Industry Intelligence (cross-border research and reports). Talk to our team.
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