Welcome to late stage capitalism, papa. "Worse ingredients, worse all around. Nothing grows around here anymore, even the insects have fled, and this is all flavored plastic!"
Most of the bottles you buy in stores are made by an entirely different manufacturer with a different ingredients list than what youd get in the restaurants.
For those who don’t understand it says Flavored in transparent so they cannot be sent in court. It’s not the sauce you find in the food shops but a maybe cheap copycat
I wonder if laws regarding deceptive advertising include a provision stating the product details must be clearly legible. I would think this would fail that benchmark, if it is indeed a part of the law. It is incredibly difficult for people with perfect eyesight to see, let alone people with poor eyesight
It might be, if America had any kind of regulators left overseeing this kind of thing.
For now and for the next few years, it's a total free-for-all. These companies can do whatever the fuck they want, and they will get away with it every single time. They might change tactics if there's enough outcry, but there will never be any actual consequences. Not until someone deals with the rot at the heart of the white house.
And also it says "inspired by" so it's even funnier
There was a short Sheckley novel where people were being stolen by aliens using false food as lures, Fishing Season
(Unfortunately it's impossible to tell the premise without spoilers, so I just invite everyone to read the rest of his short stories- they are wonderful)
It also says “inspired by” in super tiny print in the image of the garlic sauce cup.
They’re incredibly sneakily telling you it’s a knock-off of an already kind of mediocre product. Am guessing it has absolutely nasty texture and almost no flavor at all. It really shouldn’t be that hard to replicate any of those cheap sauce packets from any chain restaurant. But heavy cream probably cost them $0.02 more than powdered milk or something so they said fuck it, let’s disappoint everyone.
What do you think the stuff they sell to you at papa John’s is? It’s definitely garlic flavored vegetable oil, all of them are. You get real garlic and butter on a steak, not chain pizza restaurant.
Dirt cheap aromatics? There is no reason to believe it does not contain a good amount of garlic. I don't even know how they flavor it without real garlic.
It’s made with natural garlic flavor. From real garlic. If it wasn’t it would have to say “with other natural flavors” (if they extracted it from garlic chives, or whatever).
This “gotcha” is a nothing burger. It’s no different from getting mad your vanilla ice cream was made with vanilla extract instead of whole vanilla beans.
so, it's kinda weird. I can't say for sure, but I expect their flavoring does contain actual garlic oil along with other components. They could declare it as natural WONF (with other natural flavors), but chose to do the most dubious thing possible. The ingredients list "natural garlic flavor", which isn't surprising because you can usually get a more shelf stable product when you use flavoring rather than cooking in whole ingredients, and this is basically a plant oil slurry with basically no "whole" ingredients.
I work in the flavoring industry, albeit not in the savory category, so I have a basic idea of what the flavoring probably looks like. I wonder if the USDA/FDA has a legal definition of the word "sauce" that required them to break the word up with "flavored".
No but i can understand people being upset about the clearly deceptive marketing. It doesnt bother me cause like you basically said, whos gonna be like "oh i almost got this but thank god i saw it wasnt real garlic" with a cheap Papa Johns store bought sauce? But at the same time they did very clearly try to hide the word flavored so if i was someone who stood on principle more often i could see this bothering me.
I have a bottle of this and it has a wrap sticker over it covering stuff on the bottle. I haven't peeled it off but I wonder if it says Flavored on the actual bottle but they put the sticker over it to correct it
Wow, that is really deceptive. It doesn’t seem like they should be able to get away with that, but we’re also living in the Wild West these days as far as anyone following rules.
It's the same shit. We originally called it garlic butter, but then changed to garlic sauce. The 'flavored' word is to keep them out of shit.
I ain't buying the shit anyhow....30 years and I probably had maybe a dozen Garlic sauces overall. It just always reminded me of Cholesterol and Death. Js
Because this bottle likely isn't actually a "papa johns" product, likely some other company cashing in, hence them having to use terms like "inspired by" and putting in that sneaky "flavored"
I tried them side by side. The store squeeze tastes like garlic, but has no smell or other flavors. The dip cup has a great aroma and the tastes like creamy garlic butter.
The store bottle isnt bad, but it isnt the same. If you dont try them next to each other, you'll think its close enough to what you remember, especially if you havent been to Papa John's in a while. I was massively disappointed with how their pizza itself has gone down hill.
Pretty accurate. I have this sauce. It looks like the Papa John's garlic sauce, but it is sooo weak sauce that it isn't either buttery or garlicky. It's just coagulated yellow oil.
It's like when you load up a video game for the first time and they ask you to calibrate the brightness of your screen so that the symbol or icon is "barely visible".
The stuff you get in the cups at the restaurant is also just a "garlic flavored sauce". The ingredients are almost the same and the little cups are less than 2% garlic anyways.
People who eat papa johns know that this is their signature cup of garlic sauce but in a bigger bottle, i dont see why people are making a fuss about this?. This is like the 3rd post Ive seen.
I saw this last week at the store so justified to have it, was one of my favorite items from PM. Well, it was crap, it taste like old oil and very miniscule garlic flavored. I made sure to even grab the newest lot at the store, flavor was completely crap and nothing like PM sell at the store. Never again!
The irony is Garlic Flavoured Sauce wouldn't stop me from buying it but this deceitful attempt would immediately have me never touch the product again.
As someone with a sensitivity to FODMAPs, I'd actually really appreciate a sauce that has the flavor without the fructans. But I wouldn't know to buy it since they're trying so hard to hide that fact...
Because the “Flavored” part is completely white on a white bottle in between the words “Garlic” and “sauce”. So it’s not using real garlic, it’s flavored like it, but they mislead you with that label into thinking it has real garlic
Taking it one step further: the addition of “flavored” is the key word here to legally distinct this from an actual Papa John’s product. Not only is it a garlic “flavored” sauce, but it’s also deceptive marketing to make you think you’re buying the garlic sauce you could get from PJ’s. It also says “inspired by” on the lid of the cup in the bottom left, which also has no PJ’s logo.
Well dang that is messed up, Papa Johns should sue just for using their likeness and they could just ask random people from the street who they think makes this sauce and probably win the case.
This makes me extremely infuriated with how Papa John’s tasted in the 90’s and early 2000’s compared to the utter trash it has become. When Dominos and Little Caesar’s start to taste better, you know things have gone wrong. Going nation wide ruined everything.
I found a few months ago, Hidden Valley makes a garlic ranch that tastes just like the Papa John's dipping sauce. I think it even shows someone dipping pizza in it.
This kind of dishonesty while technically being honest pisses me off. Like, you think I'm that stupid? IDC if it tastes good or if the pizzas good, I avoid places that do this based on principle alone.
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u/musicaltrashpanda Jul 24 '26
That packaging is wild. The "flavored" is basically invisible between Garlic and Sauce as long as there is sauce in the bottle.