Hot honey: what it actually is, why it works on almost everything, and how long the window stays open

Hot honey has moved from a Brooklyn pizzeria to the Twisties aisle in about fifteen years, and Australian menus are recording 56% growth in the past twelve months. It is honey infused with chilli. That is the whole product. What makes it worth a member's attention is not novelty but economics: one ambient, shelf stable jar that works across breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert and the bar, applied to a menu item with no retraining and no waste.

What it is

Hot honey is honey infused with chilli, usually dried chilli or flakes, and frequently finished with a splash of vinegar to sharpen it and cut the sweetness.

Commercial versions range from roughly 500 to 2,000 on the Scoville scale. For context, that is milder than a jalapeño. The heat arrives late, sits behind the sweetness and fades quickly, which is precisely why it reaches an audience far wider than people who seek out chilli.

Vinegar matters far more than most recipes admit. Without acid, the result is simply sweet with a burn attached. With it, the honey reads as a condiment rather than a topping, and it starts working on savoury plates.

Where it came from

Mike Kurtz encountered chilli infused honey while studying in Brazil in 2004, where it was served with pizza. He kept making it, and in 2010 it appeared on a soppressata pizza at Paulie Gee's in Brooklyn, where it gained a following that became Mike's Hot Honey.

That origin is worth keeping because it explains the product's behaviour. Hot honey entered foodservice as a finishing element on someone else's dish rather than as a dish of its own, and it still performs that way.

How far it has already travelled

In the United States, Datassential puts hot honey on 11.3% of restaurant menus, following 230% growth over four years and 47.3% in the past year alone. It forecasts a further 151% growth by 2030 and classifies the ingredient as in proliferation rather than trend, meaning the early adoption phase has finished.

The consumer numbers underneath are the interesting part. Awareness sits at 75%. Trial sits at 48%. Overall affinity is 39%. But among people who have actually tried it, 73% love or like it.

Read those together, and the commercial conclusion is clear. The obstacle is not taste. It is trial. Hot honey performs best when a venue puts it in front of someone who did not order it deliberately.

In Australia, menu data records hot honey growing 56% over the past year, spreading across chicken, beef and dessert applications. The clearest local signal came in June 2026, when Twisties launched a Hot Chilli Honey flavour with Capilano. When a mainstream snack brand commits a flavour to a national release, the trend has already crossed from specialty into general awareness.

Why the flavour combination works

The wider category is being called swicy, and the consumer research explains the mechanism neatly. In conversations about sweet and heat combinations, sweetness appears 97% of the time while spice appears 78%. Sweetness is the anchor. Heat is support.

That ratio is the reason hot honey succeeds where straight chilli products stall. The diner is not being asked to tolerate heat. They are being offered something sweet that finishes with interest.

Fried and crispy formats account for the strongest associations, at 17% and 14% respectively, which points directly at where it should appear first on most menus.

The operational case, which is the real argument

Set the flavour aside and consider the product as an operator.

It works across every daypart. Very few ingredients earn their place at breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert and the bar. Hot honey does, which spreads the cost of carrying it across the whole trading day.

It carries no waste. Ambient, shelf stable, no refrigeration, no spoilage, no prep. In a sector where roughly a fifth of prepared food is wasted, an ingredient with effectively zero wastage is unusual.

It requires no retraining. Application happens at the pass as a finishing drizzle. No one needs a new technique, and no station changes.

It lifts perceived value cheaply. The cost per serve is measured in grams. The menu description reads as a considered addition.

It creates a point of difference without rewriting the menu. Adding it to two existing dishes is a smaller commitment than developing anything new.

Where to put it

Breakfast. Over ricotta on toast, through hot cakes and waffles, on a bacon and egg roll, with roasted stone fruit.

Lunch and dinner. Fried chicken first, because that is where the conversion happens. Then pizza, wings, halloumi, pork belly, roast pumpkin and carrots, cauliflower, a cheese toastie, sandwich builds, and glazed ham.

Cheese. Hot honey with a hard sheep's milk cheese or a blue is one of the easiest additions to a board any venue will make.

Dessert. Over vanilla ice cream, on doughnuts, with baked ricotta, alongside a cheese plate.

Bar. In a margarita, a whisky sour or a paloma, where it replaces sugar syrup and adds a finish rather than heat.

Making it in-house

Commercial jars are good, and local producers are worth supporting. Making it is also straightforward and gives a venue something of its own.

Warm honey gently, well below a simmer, with dried chilli flakes. Hold the temperature, infuse to taste, then strain and add a small measure of vinegar. Heat develops with time rather than temperature, so a longer infusion at low heat produces a rounder result than a hotter, faster one.

Two practical safety points: Use dried chilli rather than fresh. Introducing fresh chilli, garlic or other low acid fresh ingredients into honey brings water activity and food safety considerations that dried aromatics avoid. And any in house infusion should sit inside the venue's documented food safety program alongside labelling and allergen procedures, the same as any other prepared condiment. Honey is also not suitable for children under twelve months, which is worth noting if a venue serves an infant menu.

The Australian version is the opportunity

Here is where members can do something the imported jar cannot.

Australia produces exceptional honey with genuine regional character, and Australian native botanicals offer heat and aromatics that exist nowhere else. Tasmanian pepperberry brings a heat that arrives differently to capsicum chilli. Bush tomato, native thyme and desert lime all sit comfortably in an infusion.

A hot honey made with a named Australian honey and a native botanical is a house product with real provenance, a supplier story worth telling, and a flavour you can't buy in a jar. That is a considerably stronger position than carrying the same imported product as the venue down the road.

What comes after it

Datassential's read is that hot honey's next phase is diversification rather than new adoption, moving further into breakfast, beverages, desserts and cross category sauces. Its broader significance is as a gateway. Once diners have accepted sweet heat, they are open to it again.

The sweet heat combinations already moving are jalapeño honey and mango habanero. Further back, and worth watching, are pineapple habanero, Hatch chile and Calabrian chilli, which bring a fruitier, less aggressive heat that suits Australian palates.

The window

Australian menu research suggests early stage items carry roughly twelve to eighteen months of differentiation value before they become an expectation rather than a point of difference.

Hot honey is inside that window here and past it in the United States. A venue adding it now is early enough for it to register with customers and late enough that the product is easy to source and the audience already recognises it.

That window doesn't last long, and it is the most comfortable moment to move on any ingredient.

Disclaimer

This article is general information only and does not constitute food safety, legal or business advice. Members are responsible for ensuring any product prepared or served in their venue complies with the Food Standards Code, their state or territory requirements, their documented food safety program and applicable allergen labelling obligations. Restaurant & Catering Australia does not endorse any particular brand or supplier, and products named are referenced as examples of market activity only.

Data cited with attribution to Datassential, Tastewise and Inside FMCG. All third party data remains the property of the respective publishers.