IRWINDALE, Calif. » At the Huy Fong Foods factory just outside of Los Angeles, David Tran, wearing a red and green Sriracha T-shirt with the words “Risk, Dare, Dream,” poses for pictures with fans who take selfies, shake his hand and thank him for creating their beloved hot sauce.

“Everybody’s happy. I’m happy too,” he said.

Tran, a Vietnamese immigrant and rags-to-riches success story, doesn’t have to spend a hot, late-summer Saturday at his chili sauce factory. He could be at home, in air-conditioned comfort.

But Tran, 69, seems to genuinely enjoy greeting the 2,000 or so visitors who take the self-guided factory tour on Saturdays during the harvest season in the late summer and fall.

Visitors treat Tran like a celebrity — asking for photos and autographs; showing him Sriracha sauce tattoos and pictures of Halloween costumes; and telling him about their favorite ways of enjoying the sauce on food.

These folks are passionate about Sriracha and express their devotion in creative and sometimes wacky ways.

Walls on a room used for greeting visitors at the factory are covered with Sriracha art and tributes sent to the company, including Sriracha fire extinguishers, lunchboxes, T-shirts and embroidery.

A framed photo at the lobby entrance shows U.S. astronaut Ed Lu and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko enjoying a meal on the International Space Station with a bottle of Sriracha sauce.

“I made the chili sauce for Vietnamese. I never thought that it would appeal to other people. But now many people, everyone likes it,” Tran said.

The story of Sriracha is a classic Horatio Alger tale of success.

“In America, you can do everything,” Tran said.

Tran grew chilies and made hot sauce in Vietnam, then left the country on a Taiwanese freighter — the Huey Fong, after which he named his company — in 1979, landing in California.

In 1980, Tran began making his hot sauce in buckets in Los Angeles’ Chinatown. He delivered the sauce in a blue Chevy van, and the company grew as its reputation spread by word of mouth.

The Sriracha sauce, the sweet, garlicky and most popular of the three sauces Tran made, was intended for use on pho noodle soup.

The company proudly proclaims that it has never advertised, never employed salespeople and hasn’t raised its wholesale price in 35 years.

Tran is often quoted as saying that he makes “a rich man’s sauce at a poor man’s price.”

It’s a philosophy that’s brought success to Tran and his family.

This year’s sales at the privately held, family-run company are about $80 million, and growing.

To accommodate Huy Fong’s growth, the company moved to a 650,000-square-foot facility in Irwindale, a Los Angeles suburb, from its former Rosemead, Calif., factory — which, before Sriracha, was the site where Wham-O toys like Frisbees and Hula Hoops were made.

But some neighbors in Irwindale complained about the fumes, saying the smell irritated their eyes and throats. In 2013, the city of Irwindale filed a lawsuit, calling the plant a public nuisance and asking a judge to stop production until Huy Fong submitted a plan to mitigate the odors.

Hot sauce devotees and business advocates rose up and rallied in support of Sriracha.

A city in Texas tried to woo Tran away from California.

Tran installed a new air filtration system and Irwindale backed down, dropping the lawsuit last spring.

The tours started last summer, after the controversy.

Tran wanted people to see how the sauce was made and clear the air of any misunderstandings, said Donna Lam, executive operations officer at Sriracha.

The controversy is mostly behind the company, and the tours are a celebration of all things Sriracha with balloons, a guy dressed up as a Sriracha bottle, Sriracha ice cream and other snacks, plus a gift shop selling Sriracha T-shirts, toys and even Sriracha underwear.

Visitors wear red hairnets as they walk around the factory floor watching the chilies being delivered, washed, processed, and the basic sauce poured into big, blue barrels for storage until they are turned into Sriracha, chili garlic or Sambal Oelek — the company’s three sauces.

They learn that the red jalapeno chilies for the sauce are grown in California and processed within hours of being picked; that all the chilies are ground, mixed with vinegar, salt and preservatives during the harvest season from late summer through fall; and the basic sauce is stored until it is turned into the finished product.

About 50,000 tons of chilies are grown for Huy Fong on 1,700 acres at Underwood Farms in California. The factory produces more than 20 million bottles of Sriracha a year and employs 90 workers, with an additional 50 to 70 workers during the four-month harvest season.

Visitors to the factory are given tissues to protect them from the pepper fumes inside the factory.

But there didn’t seem to be a smell prevalent outside of the factory floor and the only sign remaining of the Great Irwindale Sriracha Battle is a green banner in the back of a security shack, facing inward, away from the street.

The banner says: “NO TEAR GAS MADE HERE.”