The secret is in the sauce.
A TikToker known as Chef Pii has sparked an uproar over her “pink sauce.”
After selling for less than a month there are a slew of concerns about what it looks like, its taste and labeling errors.
To gain buzz for this condiment, Pii posted a TikTok video of her making it in her kitchen, which gained 6.4 million views.
“TikTok created the pink sauce,” Pii, who has over 59,000 followers, exclusively told The Post.
Immediately the backlash started on the same place it went viral: TikTok.
“There are so many errors on this nutritional label, saying 444 servings, which is 14.4 grams [per serving],” user @seansvv stated. “Which makes almost 6,300-something grams in the whole bottle, which is inaccurate. And if these small details were overlooked, I’m looking at quality control now. I’m kind of scared.”
But Pii said the label was a graphic design mistake and will be rectified in the next batch.
The sauce’s main ingredient is dragon fruit, which is what gives it its signature pink color, she said. The other ingredients are sunflower seed oil, white vinegar, salt, raw honey, garlic, dried chili, lemon juice, milk and citric acid, according to the bottle’s label.
Another issue was the sauce had different hues of pink and people were upset with a lack of consistency.
Pii, who is also a mother of two, is chalking this up to both the batch of dragon fruit she’s using and that consumers are expecting the pink sauce to look exactly like her viral TikTok video.
Some addressed concerns that the sauce needed to be refrigerated, which wasn’t printed on the label. TikToker @seansvv said there weren’t enough preservatives in it for the sauce to just sit out.
Pii defended her brand and said, “We did a test on them. They sat out for over 30 days. And they were absolutely fine.”
There has also been an issue with the bottles exploding in their package before delivery. As an apology, Pii has said that those customers have been issued refunds and that she has since switched mail carriers from the USPS to UPS.
People also had questions about how the sauce tastes and specifically Pii’s lack of describing it herself.
She told The Post that the taste is “sweet, tangy and a little bit spicy.”
Some reviewers have compared it to ranch dressing and Pii mentioned that everyone will have a different concept of the sauce according to their own personal palette and preferences.
Pii said that she was juggling being a mother, a full-time college student and a chef all at once. In one month, she said she went to the hospital every other day for panic attacks.
To avoid taking medication for her anxiety, she said she opted for a more “natural approach” and began eating pitaya, which is another name for dragon fruit. The fruit is known for its magnesium content, which can ease anxiety.
Pii had a conversation with a friend of hers about creating a natural-looking sauce using dragon fruit — which is exactly what she did.
“We opened the restaurant and people loved it. My clients requested it all the time … And then the pink sauce just blew up,” she said.
This is when the product went to the market. Pii did a pre-sale of only 100 units on June 25 and then opened for actual orders starting July 1 for $20 per bottle.
As of now, her company will be releasing a more formal statement and working on their second batch of pink sauce shipments.
“You know, I cannot respond to each and every person because at the end of the day, it’s a brand. I don’t want people to feel like I don’t care because I’m not responding. I’m not responding, because I’m fixing the problem,” Pii said.
[Written in collaboration with other media outlets with information from the following sources]
