The “swicy” condiment that’s been slowly taking over since 2014 has gone from being a niche ingredient, to a mainstream relish. If foods were celebrities, then hot honey is the latest It Girl.
In the early 2000s it was cupcakes. In the 2010s it was avocados.
Now, the results are in, and hot honey is the trendiest culinary staple of the 2020s. The sweet and spicy syrup that started as a pizza topping is now popping up on everything from roasted vegetables to Starbucks coffees.
But whilst hot honey may feel like an overnight sensation, it is anything but a new flavour.
It began in 2004, when an American college student called Mike Kurtz was studying abroad in Brazil, where he visited a pizzeria selling jars of honey each containing a whole chilli pepper.
Kurtz drizzled it on his order and was amazed at the unique blend of sweet and spice combined with the savoury taste of the pizza. He immediately resolved to start making the syrup himself at home.
He began producing his own jars in his bedroom at the University of Massachusetts and eventually created the recipe for what he christened Mike’s Hot Honey.
After graduating he worked as a pizza apprentice under American restaurateur Paulie Gee and asked him to taste his new invention.
Gee was hooked, and in 2010 the pizzeria began offering ‘The Hellboy’, a soppressata (dried salami) pizza drizzled with Mike’s Hot Honey. The dish became an instant bestseller, with people queuing for two to three hours outside the pizzeria every night.
Kurtz went on to launch a distribution centre in 2011, and three years later partnered with Whole Foods, which became the first grocery store in the US to carry the product. As of 2024, the Mike’s Hot Honey company is projecting revenue of approximately $40million.
Increased interest began in the UK when eco chef and food truck owner Dan Shearman discovered the condiment in 2014 whilst holidaying in New York. He returned home and later that year founded WilderBee, the UK’s first hot honey brand.
“It started as one of those flavour profiles I just couldn’t stop thinking about,” says Shearman.
“It was difficult to market initially because honey is sticky and messy, whereas chilli peppers can be irritable.
“People thought I was mad when I first started pitching it. But then of course, Tik Tok came along…”
A full decade after being introduced in the UK, 2024 was The Year That Hot Honey Hit Tik Tok.
The undeniably photogenic syrup quickly amassed a hashtag with over 912million users and recipe videos of everything from Hot Honey Cottage Cheese Sweet Potato Beef Bowls to Hot Honey Peaches and Cream Upside Down Cake.
The trend also spawned its own internet slang of “swicy”, a portmanteau that combines “sweet” and “spicy” and covers a food group of which Thai sweet chilli sauce and pink peppercorn chocolate are members of.
“If you think of adding salt to caramel, then adding chilli to honey makes a lot of sense”, says Jade from JD’s Hot Honey, the business she started in 2021 after discovering a lockdown-born obsession with experimentative pizza toppings.
“People like hot honey because it’s a bold flavour that doesn’t overpower the rest of your food. It enhances the dish, it elevates the flavour.”
And that’s not all.
In moves that have fully confirmed the condiment’s mass-market appeal and rise to the top of the British food industry, in March 2025 the fast food chain Subway announced their all new Hot Honey Sauce, whilst in May the honourable Waitrose started stocking Wilderbee Hot Honey as the brand’s official retail partners. High praise indeed.
Ramona, the Detroit pizza and margarita bar in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, were ahead of the curve and have steadily introduced a wide variety of hot honey infused dishes to their menu since opening their doors in 2021.
The most recent addition, added “by popular demand”, is the Frida Margarita, a blend of apricot and hot honey that was rolled out earlier this year.
“There’s a good quote from a hot honey retailer in America that gets banded around our kitchen a lot,” says Ramona server Will, 22. “And I think it really sums up the hot honey appeal better than anything else I’ve heard.
“That once you’ve tried hot honey, eating anything without it feels like going to work without your trousers on.
“Incomplete, and a bit chilly.”
Photo by Lucinda Walton
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