What Happened To Sienna Sauce After Shark Tank?

If you think back to your answer to the dreaded "What do you want to be when you grow up?" you are most likely doing something much different than your tiny self imagined. This isn't the case, however, for the CEO of Sienna Sauce, Tyla-Simone Crayton. She knew she wanted to be an entrepreneur when she was just 8-years-old and credits "Shark Tank" for helping her see it as a viable career option (via YouTube). The young entrepreneur first experimented with sauces after her go-to wing spot shut down and her mom needed sauce for family "wing and wine Wednesdays" at their Brooklyn apartment, per Cinemaholic.

The 8-year old created a honey-based, multi-purpose sauce that was so delicious that years later, the pair sold wings with the signature homemade sauce in their neighborhood in Sienna Plantation, Texas and made nearly $50,000 doing so. As Mr. Wonderful mentioned on "Shark Tank," the sauce industry is a multi-billion dollar industry, so Tyla-Simone and her mother worked to bottle the sauce in 2018. And when the mother daughter duo appeared on "Shark Tank" in 2021, they had impressive sales numbers to share.

Tyla-Simone Crayton and her mother, Monique, came into "Shark Tank" in 2021 with confidence in their product and the sales to back it up. The pair was asking the investors for $100,000 for 10% equity in the company. While some people come on the show when their product is still a prototype, Sienna Sauce already had $255,000 in lifetime sales and could be found in 68 stores, according to Shark Tank Recap. Even so, most of the Sharks were turned off by the amount of competition in the sauce category and the fact that the company lacked distribution (via YouTube).

The only investor remaining was Kendra Scott, who related to the mother-daughter duo because the first employee she hired at her now billion-dollar jewelry company was her mother. Scott negotiated with the pair regarding their valuation and offered $100,000 for a 20% stake in Sienna Sauce. Tyla-Simone wanted to counter the offer, but the other sharks interrupted her, and she ended up accepting the offer. 

Fans of the show expressed that they weren't pleased by Scott's actions on Twitter, saying she "bullied" the pair into a deal and that she would not have asked for such a large stake in the company if it was a white-owned company, per Meaww.

It's been about a year and a half since Sienna Sauce appeared on "Shark Tank," and business is booming. In fact, CEO Tyla-Simone Crayton and her mom Monique hopped on Instagram on August 15 to celebrate $1 million in lifetime sales. According to the company's Instagram bio and store locator on its website, Sienna Sauce can be found in Target, Wegmans, HEB, and World Market. The all-purpose, honey-based sauce is available in four different flavors: sweet & tangy, lemon pepper, spice it up, and smokey brown. Sauce lovers can also purchase the gluten-free sauce on Amazon, either by the bottle or in a variety pack.

Customer reviews say it all, and the majority of the reviews for Sienna Sauce on Amazon are five stars. "Sorry Guy Fieri, I love your sauce but Sienna's knocks yours outta the park!!!! The flavor is SO good and love that it is made with natural ingredients. Buying more to share the love ... you gotta try Sienna's Sauce," said one reviewer on Amazon. 

We imagine the "natural ingredients" the reviewer is referring to is the honey base of the sauce, rather than the commonly used high fructose corn syrup (via Sienna Sauce's official website). The absence of high fructose corn syrup is a huge selling point, so we may need to add this sauce to the list of the best foods we've seen on "Shark Tank."