Our Story

the lits story.

Why Lost in the Sauce exists: the homemade sauces that should be on every table, the people who inspired these bottles, and the gap we're trying to fill on every supermarket shelf in Canada.

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100,000+Bottles sold
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Founder portrait
KarthyFounder · Toronto, ON
Meet Karthy

I started LITS to bring real sauce out of homemade kitchens.

I'm Malaysian-Tamil, born into a household where sauce wasn't a side note. Amma's sambal turned weeknight rice into something you'd remember the next day. Every friend's home I visited had its own version of the same story: a homemade sauce on the table, treated as essential, made with care.

Then I'd walk into a supermarket and the only options were watered-down bottles built for novelty wing nights and shock-value gimmicks. You know the kind. Why pair a $100 steak with the same sauce you'd put on a gas-station hot dog? Why is every spicy option on the shelf built for shock instead of for cooking?

So I started bottling the sauces I actually wanted to eat. Small batches. Real ingredients. Recipes that came from kitchens, not labs. For people who miss the taste of home. For people who've only ever known the same old stuff and deserve better. You deserve a better sauce experience.

— KarthyFounder, Lost in the Sauce
To founding.
From frustrationTo founding.
Why I started LITS

Tired of bad hot sauce.

The supermarket hot sauce aisle felt like a betrayal of the food I'd grown up eating. Vinegar-forward, one-note burn, made for novelty, not for cooking. I wanted bottles you'd actually reach for on a Tuesday night: sauces that earned their spot on the counter next to the soy sauce, not on the shelf next to the gimmick gifts.

So in 2018, I bottled the first batch of OG Boodoo in my kitchen. 100,000 bottles later, we're still cooking every batch the way Amma, Brandon's family, and the kitchens that shaped us taught us. That gap, between real sauce and what's on the shelf, is the gap LITS was built to fill.

Karthy and his mother Siva
For Siva.Always.
The emotional flagship

Built on Amma's recipe.

Amma's Malaysian Sambal is more than a tribute to my mom Siva. It's a way to capture the love she had for bringing people together through food: the way she used a meal to gather everyone, the way one spoonful of her sambal turned an ordinary table into a place you didn't want to leave.

The recipe was refined in her kitchen over years: lemongrass, ginger, kesar mango pulp, dried Thai chilis, no shrimp paste so every person at the table could eat. She put everything she had into every batch she made.

She passed before the bottled version officially launched. But every jar is a way to transport you into her kitchen — or bring her into yours. A taste of home, for those who miss it. A way to carry her legacy on. Even though she's no longer with us, a piece of her always will be. ('Amma' is Tamil for mom, and every label honours her.)

Forever.
For Brandon.Forever.
The daily workhorse

Named for Brandon Boodoo.

OG Boodoo is named for my late best friend Brandon, who introduced me to real Trinidadian pepper sauce: the kind his family made at home, not the watery vinegar bottles you'd find at the supermarket. He's the reason this brand exists.

Every bottle of OG Boodoo has his family name on the label so a small piece of Brandon is at every table where this sauce shows up. It's also a nod to his dad Eddie Boodoo, whose homemade pepper sauce inspired the OG Boodoo. It's our way of keeping Brandon in the kitchen with us.

Lost in the Sauce Toronto Billboard
From TorontoTo everywhere.
Where we're going

From Toronto, to every fridge door.

The mission isn't just to grow, it's to change what 'hot sauce' means on a North American shelf. Right now, the aisle is dominated by the same old watered-down bottles built for novelty and shock. There's barely any room for sauce the way it's actually made at home: real ingredients, layered flavour, intended as essential, not as the punchline of a wing-night dare.

LITS is here to fill that gap. For the people who grew up on real homemade sauce and miss the taste of home. For everyone who's only ever known the watered-down stuff and deserves to know what they've been missing. Toronto first. Then Ontario. Then Canada. Then North America. One bottle at a time, until 'premium hot sauce' stops meaning vinegar and fillers, and starts meaning what it should have always meant.

As featured inGQ Daily Hive Swagger Magazine Ontario Made CHFA Toronto Life
What every LITS bottle promises

Three things we'll never compromise on.

01

Essential to every meal.

Real sauce belongs on the table, not buried in the back of the fridge for one wing night a year. Built so you'll actually use it: Tuesday eggs, Wednesday rice, Sunday roast, all of it.

02

Real ingredients. Real recipes.

Lemongrass, Scotch bonnet, kesar mango, fresh garlic: things you can pronounce, made small-batch, no fillers, no extract shortcuts. Vegan, gluten-free, low sodium, all-natural. Everyone gets to eat.

03

Story in every bottle.

Amma's Sambal carries my mom's recipe. OG Boodoo honours my late best friend Brandon and his family's pepper sauce. Every other bottle is built in that same spirit: sauce worth naming, worth keeping, worth coming back to.

Taste the story.

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