The Ledger
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Advisors almost universally told Ramadan to oust co-founder Scott Norton
“The advice I mostly got was, number one, this happens to every co-founder set.
[4357] Mark Ramadan: It always happens.
[4358] Mark Ramadan: Co-founders have falling outs or fights.
[4360] Mark Ramadan: And then number two, the only solution is to remove Scott …”
Ramadan refused to fire co-founder Norton, opting for temporary step-away
“I ended up, I wouldn't say fighting with the board, but informing the board that that wasn't the path I was going to take, but that we would go down a slightly different path, which is that I would ask Scott to step away from the business for a little bit.
[44…”
Ramadan: Sir Kensington's was first in the US to use free-range eggs
“We were the first company in the country to use free range eggs and that took longer.”
Ramadan: Consumer inertia and habit are the real competitors in condiment markets
“If anything, we saw inertia as the competitor. People are on, you know, they're not impulse buying different catch-ups every week, and so the real competitor was Habit. And so we thought about how do we break a habit rather than how do we switch people away fr…”
Norton: Sir Kensington's ketchup sold better when matching category conventions
“The Closer that we got to category convention and ketchup, the more it would sell.”
Norton: There had been no innovation in ketchup in 70 years
“There had been no innovation in ketchup in 70 years, and every other category of culture and of food had change, and so really it was, we saw this open space as an invitation to create something.”
Norton: Sir Kensington's created the first successful flavored grocery mayonnaises
“And because mayonnaise carries flavors so well, all of a sudden, we were making a sriracha mayo, and we were making a chipotle mayo, and so we really created, in Whole Foods and in grocery stores, the first successful flavored mayonnaises.”
Norton: Once you give equity to someone, you cannot take it away
“Once you give someone something, you cannot take it away. The experience of having it being taken away is a very difficult emotional experience at that point.”
Ramadan: Mayonnaise buyers lacked the diehard brand loyalty Heinz commanded in ketchup
“Our experience pretty quickly was that, especially the natural food shoppers, they weren't really buying Hellman's and Best Foods anyway, because they perceived it to be gross for whatever reason. And so it was an opportunity to actually say, well, here's a hu…”
Ramadan: Promising post-acquisition stability destroys startup employees' psychological safety
“One huge mistake that we, that I made Is post acquisition, we wrongfully and maybe naively painted a picture of there won't be change or the change will only be good, right? They're going to grow our sales and everything else will stay the same. And so we, in …”
Scott Norton: French Fry Pop-Up Delivered Sir Kensington's Best Marketing ROI
“Which was still definitely the best marketing money alongside the demo funds that we've ever spent.”
Norton: Sir Kensington's spent zero dollars on Facebook ads from $8.5M raise
“Unlike so many of our peers, you know, Facebook didn't see a cent from that eight million dollar raise.”
Norton: Previous Heinz rivals failed by copying its packaging and positioning
“But every other ketchup out there would copy Heinz, the market leader, on the packaging, the materials, the brand positioning. It looked like a copycat, right? It was Heinz, but less so.”
Scott Norton Forged a Skadden Arps Legal Letter for Campus PR
“We used fake letterhead for the law firm Skadden Arps, and we wrote a letter to the Brown Daily Herald, the campus newspaper, accusing them of stealing Sir Kensington's recipe as a way to get the newspaper's attention”
Ramadan: Mayo Outsold Three Years of Ketchup Sales in Six Months
“We were selling more mayonnaise within six months than we were selling after three years of selling ketchup.”
Ramadan: Sir Kensington's was unprofitable prior to its acquisition
“But then the truth is, we weren't profitable, and so when you're not profitable, you have an end date to your cash, and you can either keep raising money, you can find a way to make your business profitable, or you can sell it.”
Ramadan: Acquisition deal champions differ significantly from day-to-day integration staff
“The reality of any deal is there is a big difference between your deal champions who acquire your business and the on the ground people who you have to work with day to day.”
Scott Norton: Ad Agency Mother New York Took Discounted Equity for Services
“With a really fantastic award-winning ad agency called Mother New York, where they would invest and they would get shares in the company, but they would get a discount because they would deliver for us also an advertising campaign.”
Norton: Sir Kensington's Sharpied out kosher logos on first Williams-Sonoma run
“So we sat there with a Sharpie and we put a dot over every single kosher logo on every single label for that first run that we had for William Snow.”
Ramadan: Sir Kensington's CEO and CMO simultaneously stepped away for months
“So on Wednesday, the company has both a CEO and a CMO, and by Monday, we're both gone for months.”
Ramadan: Sir Kensington's used double the egg yolk of industrial mayonnaise
“And the reason that our mayo tastes thick and creamy and dense and like a culinary mayo is we don't pump air or nitrogen into it. And we use almost double the amount of egg yolk that a more industrial mayo would use because that's all we could do at our scale.”
Ramadan: Sir Kensington's 2016 revenue was around $20 million
“I think it was probably about 20 million-ish.”
Norton: Premium condiments increase grocery profits but squeeze restaurant margins
“The fundamental difference of the business of a retailer and a restaurant is that for a retailer, when they buy a product, if it's more expensive, then that actually means that there's more profit for them when they sell it. The opposite is really true with a …”
Norton: Sir Kensington's conducted employee terminations at an off-site restaurant
“We had this restaurant that was two blocks from our office that we would fire people at. So we wouldn't fire people in the office. We'd fire people at this restaurant.”
Mark Ramadan: Sir Kensington's Conducted the Most Whole Foods Demos in 2015
“And I think in 2015, actually, we were the brand that did the most Number of demos in all of whole foods, the most number of demos in any category, we pushed it as far as we could.”
Norton: Sir Kensington's board would have advised against Unilever meeting
“Our board would have told us not to take the meeting.”
Norton: Mayonnaise quickly grew to 60% of Sir Kensington's sales
“And we did that and launching the mayonnaise transformed our business nearly overnight. Now, 50% of our sales are mayonnaise. Now, 60% of our sales are mayonnaise.”
Norton: Sir Kensington's set seed valuation at $2.5 million
“We were going to raise at one million a valuation, and then I met with someone who said you should raise at ten million, and I said ten million seems crazy, and so Mark and I agreed on two and a half.”
Norton: Unilever's 400-person sales force tripled Sir Kensington's business post-acquisition
“We went from having a retail sales team of four people to Unilever's sales team of 400 people spread across these 50 states, and so together with the team and with Unilever's fantastic team, the size of Sir Kensington's tripled.”
Ramadan: Sir Kensington's raised roughly three rounds in its first three years
“That 250,000 that we had raised up front lasted us probably about a year. Until we needed to raise again, and then we raised, I think it was maybe just shy of a million in the second round, and I think we did three rounds over the course of three, the first th…”
Ramadan: Food service was never the majority of Sir Kensington's revenue
“It was never the majority of our revenue in part because it was so difficult. It was not a scaled strategy.”
Mark Ramadan: Industrial Ketchup Is Made From Rehydrated Paste
“The way ketchup is made industrially is pretty difficult to replicate at home, because it's essentially a rehydrated paste.”
Sir Kensington's originally split equity equally at 25% across four founders
“When we first incorporated the business, none of us were full-time. I believe it was 2009, and so I say it was easy in the sense that there were four of us, so it was You know, 25% all around.”
Ramadan: Sir Kensington's initial checks came from founders' parents
“And I think the very first check into the business was my parents, and then Scott's parents, and a few other people who were very close to, and that allowed us to order this minimum run”
Norton: Sir Kensington's founders initially thought physical products weren't viable startups
“We never thought this would be a viable business because Everybody starting companies around us, if they were starting companies, it was like Facebook and social networks, right? Like we didn't think that a physical products business was like a viable startup …”
Ramadan: Sir Kensington's ketchup launched at nine dollars per jar
“When we launched in stores, they hit the shelf at nine dollars.”
Raz: Sir Kensington's sold over 2.5M jars by 2015
“And by 2015, the two founders had sold over two and a half million jars of product.”
Norton: Sir Kensington's rejected founder-led naming to build an immersive world
“We were totally sure we were not going to call it Scott and Mark's ketchup. Like, to us, that was totally boring. We wanted to come up with something that was so radically interesting and different, and was a world that people could inhabit.”