Houston's 20-Year-Old Entrepreneur Gets Support After Target Plans To Pull Her Popular Sauce Off Shelves

Tyla-Simone Crayton of Shark Tank fame, who started her Sienna Sauce at just 15 years old, recently suffered a setback when Target informed her that this spring its stores will no longer carry the condiment. The young entrepreneur and restaurant owner from Houston has been in the business for over five years, and she is now asking for help from the public. 

In a post shared on social media, Simone and her mother, Monique thanked supporters of the brand and urged them to empty Target’s inventory before the stores pull the product out of the shelves. Monique said that it has been challenging for them to get off the shelves at Target and the stores in Texas are finally pulling them out. 

As people rushed to support the now 20-year-old entrepreneur, Target stores went down from having 2,500 bottles of Sienna Sauce in inventory to 2,000, Fox26 reported.

"I'm so happy my community is coming together to help me in this vulnerable time," Tyla-Simone explains. "I just want to say thank you," smiles Tyla Simone.

"There are 2,000 bottles of Sienna Sauce left in Texas Target stores. I think with the community's support we can get that number down to zero. Target's probably going to be like how did this happen? Why didn't they do this before?" Simone’s mom said in the video.

This Black History Month, the mother and daughter duo are hoping that the people of Houston will buy every bottle of their product before the store stops selling it in April.

However, there is some good news for Simone, they now know that they will not have to buy back the remaining inventory as it will be donated.

Story of Seinna Sauce

Simone as a kid had “wings and wine Wednesdays” with her mom and her aunts in their apartment and on one such Wednesday, the duo set out to recreate their favorite wing sauce. They used “a bunch of random things” together and the resulting sauce was hit.

For years, the sauce was used only for family gatherings, but Simone begged her mom to let her sell it. It finally happened in 2017, when Crayton and her mom sold wings prepared with their signature sauce. Simone used social media and handed out fliers to get the word out.

Simone started the bottling business with $1,500 and the first product was called “Tangy”, which retailed for $9.95 (the same price it sells for now). The product turned out to be successful, and the business soon brought in about $48,000, Simone told CNBC.

Business began to pick up after Sienna Sauce caught the eye of a local television station which led to Simone’s TV debut. Sienna Sauce soon launched new flavors and the products were a huge hit. Monique then invested her life savings of $10,000 in the business. By the end of 2018, Sienna Sauce was being produced by a manufacturer which ramped up production. By 2019, Sienna Sauce started winning competitions including the Good Morning America side hustle contest in which Simone won $25,000.

Soon celebrity investors, including Grammy-award-winning rapper Hakeem “Chamillionaire” Seriki put their money into the business, through a crowd-funding platform. In total, Sienna Sauce raised about $200,000 from outside investors. However, in 2021, the business got a bit bigger boost when Simone and Monique appeared on an episode of ABC’s “Shark Tank,” landing a $100,000 investment from guest Shark Kendra Scott, for 20% of the company.

The products now sell for nearly $10 a bottle across 70 stores across the U.S. and in 2019, the business brought in $192,000 in revenue, according to Simone. Simone even opened her first brick-and-mortar restaurant in Missouri City, TX, just about 20 miles from Houston.