When Scott Norton and Mark Ramadan were undergraduates at Brown University in Rhode Island in the US a decade ago, they were horrified not by the 2008 financial crisis but by Heinz tomato ketchup. The sauce was so common, it seemed it would be there forever. "At the centre of supermarkets were all these classic American brands that hadn't evolved in 70 years," recalls Norton. As they talked to their friends, they realised that none of them wanted bland, mass-market products shipped from factories by huge corporations. So they started to mix their own organic ketchup. On graduation, they founded a company and, having no origin story with resonance, named it after a mythical Victorian called Sir Kensington, a monocled adventurer who had "advised the British East India company in the acquisition of spices". The pair are now 31, at the heart of a millennial generation that has come of age, transforming business not only in the US but around the world. In April, their company was acquire...
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