Sir Kensington is a nobly born graduate of Oxford University who holds three degrees and is credited with the invention of re-insurance. He cuts an impressive figure and is said to resole his shoes with old top hats and have a smaller version of his cane within his cane. Kensington is rumored to have "invented romance when he tired of committing adultery," and "invented hunting to amuse himself on bank holidays."
Who is Sir Kensington? The monocle-wearing, top-hat-sporting, black-and-white cartoon figure is the public face of a new gourmet ketchup brand bearing his name.
Despite Kensington's myriad accomplishments, he is first and foremost the brainchild of entrepreneurs Scott Norton '08 and Mark Ramadan '08. The duo, along with Norton's childhood friend and University of Southern California senior Brandon Child, are the pioneers behind "Sir Kensington's Gourmet Scooping Ketchup." The high-end brand is set to debut at a launch party Saturday night and is the culmination of a semester's hard work, determination and occasional physical injury.
'I have a great idea'
When Norton visited Child at USC over winter break, Child presented him with a business proposition. This is fairly typical for Norton, a teaching assistant for ENGN 1930X: "Entrepreneurship and New Ventures."
"My friends are always pitching me ideas," he said.
Norton said he usually shoots ideas down or has to describe the thousand reasons why they won't work. But when Brandon told him, "I have a great idea: gourmet ketchup," Norton was pleasantly surprised to think that the product could really sell.
"I started thinking about it and realized, 'How many different kinds of mustard are there? Tons. How many kinds of ketchup are there? Really only two, Heinz and Hunts,'" Norton said. "It's kind of a duopoly."
Intrigued by the proposition, Norton returned to campus and introduced the idea to Ramadan.
"The idea appealed to me a lot because I'm going into consulting and this idea goes to the core of trading-up," Ramadan said. He explained that trading-up economic theories examine consumers' willingness to pay premium prices for the impression of a high-end product, or as Ramadan described it, a sense of "gourmetness."
"People don't think of ketchup as having a multiplicity of options," Ramadan said. "You would never have just one kind of car you can drive or one shampoo to wash your hair with, so why have one ketchup? I just thought that was weird."
From a business perspective, an incremental change in the product yields a significant change in the profit margin. Ramadan used the Starbucks enterprise as a prime example of this kind of marketing: offering the same coffee as any other place, but with the addition of ambience - the music, the decor, the Seattle backstory.
Ramadan and Norton both cited Grey Poupon as the inspiration for gourmet condiments. In the 1970s, Grey Poupon debuted to compete with French's mustard, later airing a now-famous commercial featuring a man in a Rolls-Royce adorning his food with luxury mustard. From a production standpoint, Ramadan said, the two brands of mustard were not that different, but the presentation of Grey Poupon allowed the manufacturers to charge double.
"Coming from a background with (Modern Culture and Media) experience and industrial design, I was inspired," Norton said. "To sell something like this, you focus on the three elements of design: packaging, product and preparation."
Preparation
Making ketchup is a simple four-step process, Ramadan explained. "You start with a tomato puree," he said, adding that he and Norton use organic pre-pureed, skinned tomatoes. "Then you throw the puree in a pot, add the ingredients and boil off the water."
Friend Courtney Hutchison '08 said Norton and Ramadan are not normally handy in the kitchen, but "they really took to the task with a lot of enthusiasm. They're in the kitchen with their trance music on, just cooking huge pots of tomatoes."
Despite their enthusiasm and the apparent simplicity of the recipe, Norton and Ramadan quickly learned to tweak their process to handle small problems.
The addition of the trance music was crucial to the cooking process, Norton said. "We have to have trance music on all the time," he said. "We were getting tired and we needed something to keep us awake."
The pair did all of the cooking in Norton's "nice big kitchen," but soon realized that in the boiling process, ketchup splattered everywhere. After the first batch, they decided to lay plastic down on every surface. They also adopted a uniform of gloves, an apron and sunglasses to protect themselves from the hot splashes.
Though these protective measures have saved the chefs from any serious injuries, both Norton and Ramadan proudly display small, scarred burns on their arms and hands that they affectionately refer to as "Kensington kisses."
When friends find out that the two make their own ketchup, "people are always impressed," Ramadan said. "They seem to think that ketchup is this mystery condiment, but it's really not that hard."
Product
Of course, to create the product, the team needed prototypes, so Norton and Ramadan held a tasting party in Norton's kitchen. "We took eight different ketchup recipes ... and 'organified' everything." The pair presented the ketchups, as well as a ninth sample of standard Heinz ketchup, to about 40 guests, all armed with scorecards.
The scorecards rated the ketchups on various qualities, including whether the sauce "tastes healthy." Norton explained that almost all of the surveys responded that the gourmet ketchups tasted healthier than the single-blind Heinz sample. This has become a very important selling point for Sir Kensington's because buying gourmet food is "all about perception," he said.
"I was really impressed by their tasting party," Hutchison said. "They had eight different kinds of ketchup and none of them were bad."
Based on a matrix of those ratings, Norton and Ramadan culled out two final products: a classic ketchup and a spiced ketchup.
The classic ketchup is made with the ingredients of standard ketchups - vinegar, a sugar, salt and a tomato base - but has some variation. To start, all of the ingredients are organic. And rather than using the high-fructose corn syrup found in Heinz, Sir Kensington's contains organic brown sugar, agave nectar and wildflower amber.
The spiced ketchup - the "real moneymaker," Ramadan said - includes the ingredients of the classic version with the addition of chipotle, cilantro, bell peppers and lime juice.
The result is a versatile "scooping ketchup" that should be appropriate everywhere, from fancy breakfast plates to filet mignon or even incorporated into pad Thai - "not just a squeeze bottle to be poured over typical American food," Norton said.
Packaging
Norton's business training warned him that amped-up ingredients would not be enough to turn gourmet ketchup into a worthwhile enterprise. "What sells it is an integrated backstory, a humorous Web site," he said. "You make your product into a presence, more than a simple sauce you put on food."
Norton and Ramadan found that backstory in the fictitious Sir Kensington, the English gentleman who figures prominently on the newly minted glass bottles of "100 percent organic, hand-crafted, gourmet ketchup," the site boasts.
Kensington was born out of conversations Norton had with Child. Norton described his group of friends as having a "sub-language ... adding words to something even when it's not necessary." This habit led to curious posh British-isms that populated their everyday conversation and eventually led to Child's cat being named Maximus von Mason and the ketchup mogul being dubbed Sir Kensington.
Norton laughed at the irony of the christening, saying Kensington "just kind of became the name and gave it the right sense of gourmet," though the title was conceived during a trip to
"Steve and Barry's to buy $9 shoes."
The paradox of bargain-barrel footwear and high-end condiments fits Norton and Ramadan perfectly. The pair created a user-friendly Web site, agonized over the typography of business cards and event tickets and threw a cocktail-attired tasting party. But at the end of the day, they were still two young adults who spent eight hours a week cooking ketchup.
Prosperity?
Getting people to buy what they are offering doesn't seem to be a problem for Norton and Ramadan. Having produced only 192 jars of Sir Kensington's for this weekend's launch party, 163 have already been promised to pre-orders. This includes a case of 20 jars ordered by Paul Neuman, a prominent New York City caterer.
This Saturday's launch party will be a pivotal event for the entrepreneurs as the official debut of Sir Kensington's. Guests are asked to "dress to impress."
One guest sure to impress will be a life-size cutout of Sir Kensington, who is also scheduled to grace the Main Green this afternoon. Hutchison and two other redheads will be attending as "ketchup girls," posing for photos with the Kensington cutout.
Neither Norton nor Ramadan is sure how each will continue the burgeoning enterprise after graduation this May.
Both students already have job prospects that do not involve ketchup, and the launch party will feature guests they describe as "more well-connected in the food community" and could be potential heirs to the brand.
Norton and Ramadan both offered their vote of confidence for Sir Kensington's large-scale success.
"We do believe it's a high-quality product with an audience," Norton said.
"The thing about a gourmet product is its appeal," Ramadan said. "If we can get people to ask for our product by name, like San Pellegrino or Perrier, and have that same sense of etiquette, class and gourmetness, then maybe that's the next step for the business."
