TikTok’s notorious “Pink Sauce” is going legit.
The viral condiment’s creator, Chef Pii, has signed with Dallas-based culinary company Dave’s Gourmet to put her sauce on “e-commerce platforms, in restaurants and on major food retailers’ shelves,” Dave’s said in an announcement.
For those who’ve somehow managed to dodge the Pink Sauce debacle, here’s a recap: Chef Pii, who is a Florida-based private chef and has 180,000 followers on TikTok, started making videos where she drenched food in a sauce that looks like it came straight out of the Teletubbies’ custard machine. People, naturally, were intrigued in getting their hands on the stuff.
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That’s when things went wonky. Chef Pii started shipping out bottles of Pink Sauce, charging $20 a pop. And the customers who received them weren’t exactly happy. There were reports of food poisoning (possibly caused by Pink Sauce containing milk and not being shipped in a refrigerated container), exploded bottles, misprinted nutrition labels, and more.
In a 52-minute YouTube video from July that’s now been set to private, Chef Pii responded to the backlash, telling viewers, “Y’all really just gotta give me a break. Y’all gotta stop this negativity.” She went on to say that she had to “separate from this stuff” and that “I cannot allow y’all to bury me mentally.”
In another video, she said her Pink Sauce production followed FDA standards, and that the product was “currently in lab testing” with the intention of pitching it to stores.
Now it looks like that retail dream is coming true. David Neuman, CEO of Dave’s Gourmet, said in a statement that his company took less than a week to make a shelf-stable version of Pink Sauce.
“Our R&D team was able to re-formulate the sauce to match Chef Pii’s exact color and flavor profile for the product and at the same time change some of the ingredients to make the sauce less complicated, dairy-free, and clean of any preservatives, artificial colors or flavors,” Neuman said.
“Chef Pii will continue driving the social media aspects of the business and will participate in all the major steps of commercial production of The Pink Sauce™,” he added.
Neuman said Dave’s Gourmet hopes to release the sauce this fall, and that it’s “working 24/7 to make it happen.”
