David Chang issues apology over ‘chili crunch’ trademark controversy

David Chang issued a public apology on his podcast amid criticism over his company Momofuku attempting to trademark the term “chili crunch.”

Chang, chef and founder of Momofuku, and Momofuku CEO Marguerite Mariscal said on the April 12 episode of Chang’s podcast, “The Dave Chang Show,” that they are no longer enforcing the trademark.

Over the years, Chang has become somewhat synonymous in the U.S. with Korean fine dining, microwave cooking and a host of Asian supermarket goods.

As a celebrity chef, he’s no stranger to controversy: Chang isn’t afraid to share hot takes online, and he’s been accused of facilitating toxic work environments in his restaurants. (Chang called accusations made in a 2020 Eater article “consistent with his behaviors at the time,” and apologized, though he didn’t remember them specifically.) But this time, folks are fuming over his recent attempt to own the term “chili crunch,” which it uses for the chile-allium-oil condiment sold under the Momofuku brand.

According to the Guardian, the brand sent cease-and-desist letters to companies using the term “chili crunch” and “chile crunch” and was hoping to successfully trademark the former. (It purchased the trademark for the latter in 2023 from Chile Colonial, a company that now licenses the product name from Momofuku.)

Shortly after the report, everyone from consumers to small-business owners and even fellow chefs took to social media to share their disappointment with the man who has held firm ground as a leader in the Asian American culinary space.

Now, Chang and the Momofuku team are saying they won’t be enforcing the trademark, even though it may put their ownership of the term at risk.

Here’s everything you need to know about the controversy.

What happened?

In 2020, Momofuku started selling jars of chili crunch — a spicy condiment commonly found across many Asian cultures made with chilis and oil — which it launched in 2018.

The product also goes by chili crisp, chili oil, crunchy chili sauce and countless other names, and it took off exponentially across the American grocery market in 2021, though Momofuku was not the first to bring it to shelves.

There are now dozens of brands selling to consumers across the country, and all of them have their own recipe twists and monikers. Some opt to include the word “crunch” in the name, much like Chang’s company did.

On April 4, the Guardian reported Momofuku is currently trying to trademark “chili crunch” with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Though it doesn’t own the trademark yet, Momofuku sent cease-and-desist letters to an unknown number of brands that use “crunch” in their condiment’s name.

What small business owners are saying

“The phrase that I would use to refer to Momofuku in this case, is a trademark bully,” says Stephen Coates, the lawyer representing New York-based Malaysian food brand Homiah, which received a cease-and-desist. Homiah sells a Sambal Chili Crunch.

The brand’s founder, Michelle Tew, wrote in a LinkedIn post that the letter “felt like a punch in the gut.” She told the Guardian that had she received a cease and desist from a large corporation like Kraft Heinz, it would have been “distressing,” but “the fact that it was Momofuku makes me feel really, really sad.”

Jing Gao, founder and CEO of Fly by Jing, a Sichuan chili sauce company, wrote on LinkedIn that she is “disheartened” to see Chang’s company allegedly “go after numerous brands including small minority women founded businesses.”

“This kind of action, if successful, sets a dangerous precedent for the squashing of fair competition, not to mention how ridiculous it is to try and take ownership of a generic cultural term,” Gao continued.

She tells TODAY.com that as a business owner herself who was told in the past that her chili crisp product was “too niche” for the American market, she sees more competition as a good thing.

“This isn’t a zero-sum game, and there is enough space for everyone,” Gao says. “The bigger we can grow the pie for all, the better it is for everyone.”

Eric Huang, chef and founder of Pecking House, tells TODAY.com that “trademarking food is an exercise in capitalist nonsense.” Between all the effort he’s seen is necessary for building a business, the work that goes into recipe testing and the logistics of creating a food product, “the only reason you would (trademark food) is for a soulless cash grab.”

Huang continues to call this trademark filing “a disappointing turn of events for someone who so singularly represents AAPI in the food & beverage industry.”

“This is so uncool,” Kerry Diamond, founder of Cherry Bombe magazine and former coffee shop owner, wrote in an Instagram caption. “Dave was once the little guy.”

“I hope it isn’t Dave Chang personally issuing this command,” Huang says, “but rather his boardroom of likely rich, white dudes who got their MBA from Tuck.”

Chang and Momofuku’s response to the controversy

“First and foremost, I want to apologize to everyone in the AAPI community who’s been hurt or feels like I’ve marginalized them or put a ceiling on them by our actions,” Chang said on his podcast. “There’s a lot of chefs that I’m friends with. There’s a lot of people that are upset, customers, and that’s the last thing — literally the last thing — that I wanted to happen.”

He continued, adding, “I spent the greater part of my adult life trying to bring light to Asian food, Asian American food, Asian identity, what it means to be Asian American. I understand why people are upset and I’m truly sorry.”

“When we created our product, we wanted a name we could own and intentionally picked ‘Chili Crunch’ to further differentiate it from the broader chili crisp category,” a spokesperson for Momofuku and Chang told TODAY.com. The company initially said it hoped to resolve branding disputes amicably.

Chang, in his podcast, explained the backstory behind Momofuku’s chili crunch, citing the brand Lao Gan Ma, known for its spicy chili crisp sauce, as one of the original inspirations for the product, in addition to other sauces including ssamjang and salsa macha.

“When we were thinking about naming — and again, shame on me if I didn’t know this — but we named it chili crunch specifically because it was not chili crisp,” Chang explained. “And we named it chili crunch because it was out of deference to chili crisp, which we associated with as Chinese, specifically carved out by Lao Gan Ma.”

The name behind the popular product was intentional, with Chang explaining that the product wasn’t “chili crisp,” but rather the texture “was crunchy.”

“Had I known, or Momofuku known, that chili crunch was a tautology, basically the same as chili crisp, we would have never named it chili crunch,” he said.

Chang and Mariscal explained that when the brand launched its chili crunch product, it received a cease-and-desist letter from the Colorado based company Chile Colonial. However, rather than changing the name of its product, Marsical said that Momofuku worked with the company to purchase the trademark and gave the brand “a perpetual license to continue to use the name.”

“Everything Momofuku said in the podcast is true,” Susie Hojel, founder of Chile Colonial, tells TODAY.com. “I did send a cease-and-desist letter to Trader Joe’s to defend my mark, and ultimately they changed their name. I later sent a cease-and-desist letter to Momofuku.”

Trader Joe’s did not respond to TODAY.com’s request for comment on whether it changed its name because of the cease-and-desist from Chile Colonial.

Hojel says when she applied for and then received the “chile crunch” trademark from USPTO, she thought it “covered any spelling of the name.”

“When we acquired this mark, it then became our job to protect it,” Mariscal explained. “The reason we received a cease-and-desist from Chile Colonial is the same exact reason that Momofuku was sending them out, which is if you don’t show the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) that you’re routinely defending your mark — and that’s from any size business, large, small — then you’re at risk of losing your trademark.”

Mariscal said Momofuku was “stuck with a dilemma” of how to handle and protect the trademark without having the term “chili crunch” claimed by another company.

At the end of the podcast, Chang shared the future of Momofuku’s plans with the trademark, explaining, “The plan moving forward with this trademark is — and it’s a strange way of sort of taking the power away from it — by doing nothing.”

“We’re not going to enforce the trademark,” he said. “And by doing so, it’s possible that it becomes a generic term and nobody can own it.”

Marsical added, “As a business, we’re taking the risk that by not enforcing it. Someone could come along — someone much bigger than us — say we’re not enforcing it, and therefore, they should own the mark.”

Hojel says she is “truly sorry Momofuku has received so much bad publicity for defending their trademark.”

“The name Chile Crunch has become very popular and I think some companies wanted to take advantage of the trend,” she adds. “I believe if you have a registered trademark, it is your right to defend it. It is too bad that it is so difficult and expensive to do so.”

On his podcast, Chang said, “I don’t want this to be seen as being inactive or being apathetic to the situation or us trying to have monopolistic powers or anything like that. Our choice is to do nothing. That is our action, is inactivity, no enforcement, no policing of this trademark. And if there’s a better plan, we’re all ears.”

What next?

Before Momofuku walked back the cease-and-desist, folks like Tew were given 90 days to stop using the word “chili crunch,” and five days to respond saying they would acquiesce.

“Momofuku trusts that Homiah did not adopt the CHILI CRUNCH mark in bad faith or with an intent to create confusion,” the cease-and-desist letter reads. “But because trademark law requires brand owners to police use of their trademarks — and because Momofuku is concerned that consumers may actually be confused here — we write to request Homiah’s cooperation.”

Diamond wrote in her Instagram caption that as a small business — especially for anyone who is a “newbie entrepreneur” — it can be scary to go up against a big company.

“You’re scared so you pay the thousands of dollars to hire a lawyer to tell their lawyer to go away,” she wrote. “It just sucks.”

Tew told TODAY.com that she had already spent around $5,000 to have a lawyer draft a response to the cease and desist.

She says she spoke with others who, within just a few days, apologized to Momofuku and said they would rebrand. The Guardian reported several brands had decided to comply and change their product names to avoid the fees and hassle of a legal battle.

This article was originally published on TODAY.com