Slice Of Sauce: Here's What Happened After Appearing On Shark Tank

Husband and wife duo Cole and Emily Williams saw a problem with everyday sandwiches: lousy sauce packets. Those packets of ketchup and mustard that you get at drive-thrus are fussy, hard to open, and the product inside never seems to cover the sandwich evenly. Plus, you do actually need to refrigerate ketchup for maximum lifespan. Armed with a trade secret, they figured out a process for dehydrating popular sauces like ketchup and sriracha and created Slice Of Sauce. Emily Williams compared the slices of sauce to a slice of American cheese. When you lack bottles of sauce or simply want a mess-free way to munch on a well-dressed burger, you could theoretically reach for a Slice Of Sauce and be good to go.

The Williamses launched the idea of Slice Of Sauce with a 2018 Kickstarter campaign that raised $34,000. They managed to rake in an additional $500,000 from loved ones and funding from a tech accelerator. The couple had also funneled $120,000 of their own money into their passion project. In three years, however, Slice Of Sauce still hadn't launched. That's when the Williamses knew that they needed to fish in deeper waters ... like those of the "Shark Tank."

One thing about Cole and Emily Williams is that they know how to attract attention. Armed with verve and toothy smiles, as well as a showy presentation that involved ribbons of squirted ketchup and mustard, the pair pitched Slice Of Sauce to the assembled sharks: Barbara Corcoran, Mark Cuban, Lori Greiner, Kevin O'Leary, and guest shark Alex Rodriguez. The pair asked for an investment of $200,000 in exchange for 10% equity in the company. Most of the sharks agreed that the slices, which resembled fruit roll-ups, had decent flavor. Yet concerns emerged when it came to the actual market viability of the slices, and the fact that the Williamses hadn't yet launched the product.

Corcoran and Greiner bowed out from negotiations. Greiner said that she didn't feel that sandwich condiments represented enough of a problem to warrant Slice Of Sauce's high cost ($5.99 for eight slices). Corcoran was appalled when she discovered that the company was still pre-revenue, derisively calling it a "dream." O'Leary took a bite, offering the asked-for $200,000 in exchange for 5% equity, plus a royalty of $0.10 that would continue until he'd earned $700,000. Rodriguez countered with an offer of $200,000 as debt to the company, which would switch over to a 20% equity deal once a threshold of $1.8 million was hit. After a bit of banter and wheel-spinning, the Williamses took Rodriguez's deal.

Despite promising to start delivery of products in 2019, a bit of digging reveals that Slice Of Sauce was still not actively selling stock when its "Shark Tank" episode aired in 2021. The deal with Alex Rodriguez never came to fruition. Immediately after the Williamses posted triumphant memes celebrating their "Shark Tank" success on Instagram, the comments began to roll in. Some told a less flattering story, with folks asking if the product ever even existed. Some buyers who said they had placed a pre-order threatened to ask for refunds after having waited a long time to receive their products. 

Finally, in July 2021, Slice Of Sauce's Instagram reported that the first batch of slices had just come off the manufacturing line. A few floating reviews on YouTube indicate that some consumers got their hands on the slices, but these are few and far between, indicating that the first production run may have also been the last. 

There's also the fact that slices of ketchup and sriracha were a hard sell. A handful of internet comments expressed bewilderment and disgust at the idea of putting a jellied slice of ketchup on a burger, while others joined Corcoran in pointing out that nobody ever actually complained about squeezing condiments on sandwiches. Furthermore, the cost was a stumbling block. For the same price of eight servings of sliced sauce, you could buy two whole bottles of ketchup. Regardless of reasons, it seems that Slice Of Sauce followed in the beleaguered footsteps of companies like Peekaboo Ice Cream, which floundered after appearing on "Shark Tank," and went out of business.

Slice Of Sauce's Instagram was last updated in September 2021, its Facebook page is seemingly offline, and its website is likewise no more. In fact, it is hard to find any proof at all that the company ever existed. In the end, the same challenges that the Williamses described on "Shark Tank" — the need for machinery in manufacturing, the struggles with scale, and the constant demands for money despite never fully launching a product — may well have sunk the company's battleship.

Again, this is also a product that was a tough sell for some consumers due to its intrinsic weirdness. Perhaps the world just wasn't ready for slices of ketchup or hot sauce. In interviews, Cole and Emily Williams admitted that they were aware people had misgivings about the texture and presentation of Slice Of Sauce products. On "Shark Tank," the sharks warned the Williamses that getting the product into the hands of customers and encouraging them to try something so novel was going to be a challenge. Given the manufacturing difficulties, it was a hurdle that the company appears to have never approached, let alone cleared.

It seems that Emily and Cole Williams finally found their little piece of culinary entrepreneurial heaven, but it wasn't with ketchup slices. In 2022, the pair founded RADD Foods, a company dedicated to dairy-free cheeses. Their first forays into retail were with slices flavored with ranch and Frank's Red Hot, proving that they were still suckers for great taste in condiments. RADD Foods products are currently sold in markets in Michigan and Indiana, which seems to point to the existence of at least a modest following.

Interestingly, neither Cole Williams nor Emily Williams lists Slice Of Sauce on their respective LinkedIn accounts, leading one to wonder if this failed business was a chapter of their lives that they would just as soon forget. If it were not for "Shark Tank" being immortalized in syndication, there would be almost no lingering traces of Slice Of Sauce anywhere, which may well have been intentional on the part of the founders.