TikTok is known for making small businesses go viral overnight, product recommendations that cause a specific shade of blush to sell out everywhere and convince thousands of people to make salmon rice bowls for lunch every day.
But the buzz on the platform has apparently gotten the better of some users, causing them to forget a tried and true rule: maybe don’t eat unidentified gunk made by a stranger and shipped in plastic flat mailers during a record-breaking heat wave?
Since mid-June, a TikToker from Chef.Pii has been posting about Pink Sauce, a homemade concoction that she uses as a dipping sauce for chicken and cucumbers and pours on tacos, gyros and Big Macs. People seemed intrigued – why is it pink? How does it taste? And the bravest of them wanted to know, is it for sale? It turns out Chef.Pii would sell it – for $20. What luck!
Customer reviews have started pouring in, with TikTok users recording themselves unpacking their Pink Sauce, checking out the packaging and doing a few sniff and taste tests, while others watch with (understandable) horror.
First, there isn’t much consistency in the color and texture of the sauce. In previous videos Chef.Pii posted, the sauce was Barbie pink and smooth in texture, similar to ranch dressing. But sauce from some customers is instead a light pink and – perhaps more worryingly – fat, as if it had curdled since the packaging. In other videos, Pink sauce is waterysputtering from a ketchup bottle-shaped container. Glitter is sprinkled on some bottles, with labels applied with what appears to be glitter glue. But what really made TikTok users question the safety of the sauce is the fact that no one really knows what’s in it.
The nutrition labels on the bottles are full of typos and don’t offer much clarity about what you’re putting into your body. First, a serving is one tablespoon, and the label says there are 444 servings in a bottle, which would be about 1.7 gallons. This could be a simple typo, or it could be the creator dropping cosmic hints in the form of “angel numbersfor her blessed customers. Ingredients are also eyebrow raising. “Vinegar” is misspelled as “finger”. Apparently it has milk in it but no preservatives.
Some describe it as tasting and smelling like a ranch. Others say it is sweet and spicy. Guess I’ll never know.
In a really gruesome video, a customer dons a pair of blue surgical gloves before unpacking a leaking bottle of Pink Sauce. The white mailer colored in pink is bad enough. But when they remove the “sauce”, it looks like someone threw up a gender reveal cake for a girl.
“There’s not even pink sauce on this bitch,” they exclaim. The entire amount of sauce — all 444 servings — leaked and flowed together around the bottle like a papier-mâché project made with ranch, tissue paper, and glitter.
However, not everyone hates it. One person named Jade Amber picked up her Pink Sauce from her car, dressed in a pink velor tracksuit, sitting in her seat with baby pink quilted covers, with furry pink dice dangling from the rearview mirror. In a taste test at home, she sprayed it on her lunch bowl.
“OK, so the sauce is good,” she says after chewing and stopping her video. She wouldn’t repurchase it though, as it’s $20 for a flavor she’s tasted before (?).
Chef.Pii has not commented on The edge‘s request for comment, but she did post an apology video a day ago. The 444 servings were a mistake and her team would replace the labels for future orders.
“I’m only human, I’m not perfect,” says Chef.Pii. The product follows the “FDA standard,” she says, but is currently being “lab-tested.”
She also said she would work to cut costs, a major complaint people had. And if you missed ordering, don’t worry — Chef.Pii says she’s working to bring Pink Sauce to the stores.