Houston’s Teen Sauce Entrepreneur Builds Her Brand Into a Hot Commodity — Sienna Sauce Makes Neiman Marcus Waves

A perch in Neiman Marcus for a Saturday afternoon personal appearance is a long way from where entrepreneur Tyla-Simone Crayton began her ascent to national attention. But that’s where the 17-year-old CEO of Sienna Sauce shared her unlikely journey and her next step with PaperCity before greeting customers passing through the posh designer handbag area where her products were on colorful display.

From creating her “Everything Sauce” aka Sienna Sauce at age 8 working from her mother’s kitchen in Brooklyn to a Good Morning America windfall then on to Shark Tank where Texas jewelry designer Kendra Scott committed $100,000 to the brand, Tyla-Simone’s story is one of the American dream.

Way back, when her favorite wing shop with its amazing sauce went out of business, the youngster was determined not to lose that special taste sensation. Tyla-Simone experimented with various ingredients until she had perfected the sauce. Once the family had moved to the Houston suburb of Missouri City, her mother, Monique, finally granted the young teen’s request to sell wings topped with her secret sauce out of their home. It was 2017.

Friday was the day of the week when the Sienna Wings were fried and the sauce poured on. The family living room became a waiting area for order pickup. The kitchen became fryer central. By the time the wings had totally taken off, the Craytons had four fryers spread throughout the house.

“We smelled like chicken for a year. We got used to it,” Tyla-Simone laughs. “It was in our clothes, our hair, our sheets our bed, our couches. But it was fun. If a fry got a little wonky we’d eat it ourselves.”

Once the wings became a hot item in the neighborhood, Tyla-Simone began bottling the sauce — at age 14. That with a $1,500 investment from her mother for purchasing the first 1,000 bottles, plus labels and sealing equipment. Eventually, they stopped frying the chicken, telling fans that if they wanted Sienna Wings they would have to make their own and buy the sauce.

Their first retail outlet was Bean Here Coffee in the Sienna (Plantation) neighborhood, where they Craytons were regulars. Two additional flavors — spicy and lemon pepper — were added to the offerings of “Everything Sauce” that isn’t ketchup, isn’t barbecue sauce rather a sauce that brings a high volume of flavor to everything from chicken to pork to seafood.

Before finding a local manufacturer in 2019 and hiring professional help, the family did it all from the ground up, cooking the sauce and bottling it at home, marketing, handling distribution and developing a social media platform.

“We were the CMO, the CEO, COO, the CFO,” Tyla-Simone laughs. She notes that they learned their way from You Tube, from Google research and by joining Black business networking events.

“Networking has definitely been beneficial to us because it helped us learn a lot about our industry,” the poised teen says.

Today, the Sienna Sauce in three flavors is carried in six H-E-B stores, nine Wegman’s grocery stores in the New York area, Manready Mercantile in Houston and Austin, and other locations, all of which are listed on the website.

Sienna Sauce’s Future

In the fall, Tyla-Simone heads to the University of California-Berkeley where she plans to major in business entrepreneurship, even though she could probably teach a master class on the subject. But she is not abandoning her sauce and plans to continue as Sienna Sauce CEO via Zoom. In the meantime, she hints that the brand is expanding with new flavors and new merchandise in addition to the cookbook, T-shirts, sweatshirts and hoodies that are currently available on the website.

PaperCity asked Tyla-Simone for her advice to other young people wishing to make a mark early in their lives.

“Continue asking questions. I wouldn’t have gotten this far without asking questions and defying the norm,” she says. “I really don’t like the box. I really like to be box adjacent. I would say that’s where you need to be. You definitely need to know how to play the game in the box, but know for yourself that you are outside the box.

“And continue asking questions. Don’t believe everything you hear and don’t fall into the system. Think for yourself. Figure you what you love and what you want to do and follow it.”

Tyla-Simone’s public appearance in Neiman Marcus was part of the company’s salute to young entrepreneurs in the Houston area.