Sir Kensington's: From Fancy Ketchup Rebellion to Unilever

Sir Kensington's started as a joke with a point: what if ketchup didn't have to be Heinz?

The brand built its early identity around glass bottles, quirky British-inspired packaging, non-GMO ingredients, and a direct challenge to the most entrenched condiment in American kitchens. It was clean-label, irreverent, and small enough to feel like a genuine alternative.

Then Unilever bought it.

Unilever announced the acquisition in April 2017. The terms were not disclosed, though FoodNavigator-USA reported that Bloomberg put the price at about $140 million, citing a person familiar with the transaction.¹ Sir Kensington's co-founders Mark Ramadan and Scott Norton stayed on at first. The press release promised rapid distribution growth while holding to the brand's values.²

Six years later, the product that started the whole company — ketchup — was discontinued.³

This is not a claim that every Sir Kensington's product is bad. The company still sells mayonnaise, mustard, sauces, and dressings. Some products still use better-than-standard ingredients. The point is narrower and more useful: the brand's independent challenger story no longer matches its ownership, operating incentives, or product history.

The Origin Story

Sir Kensington's began before it was a real company. Mark Ramadan and Scott Norton met at Brown University and started working on a better ketchup concept while still students. The mascot was fictional: Sir Kensington, a monocled, aristocratic character designed to stand against the generic red squeeze bottle.

That fictional founder did useful work. He made ketchup feel less like a commodity and more like a food worth questioning.

The first Sir Kensington's ketchup launched in 2010 in original and spicy versions. TASTE later described the product as thicker, darker, less sweet, and more seasoned than Heinz, with glass packaging and a spoonable texture rather than the familiar plastic-bottle squeeze.⁴ Food & Wine described the ketchup as made from 100% vine-ripened tomatoes and free of high-fructose corn syrup, at a time when that was far less common on mainstream grocery shelves.³

Sir Kensington's was not just selling ketchup. It was selling taste, ingredient standards, and a little rebellion. The brand grew from ketchup into mustard, mayonnaise, and eventually Fabanaise, a vegan mayo made with aquafaba. By 2017, FoodNavigator-USA reported that Sir Kensington's had reached more than 6,000 retail locations and had built a sizable foodservice business.¹

The pitch was clear: condiments are food too. If shoppers cared about grass-fed beef, pasture-raised eggs, or better bread, they should care about what went on top.

That was a good argument. It still is.

The Acquisition

Unilever announced on April 20, 2017 that it had signed an agreement to acquire Sir Kensington's, calling the New York company a mission-driven condiment maker and a leader in organic and natural condiments.²

The strategic fit was obvious. Unilever already owned Hellmann's, one of the dominant mayonnaise brands in the United States, along with a large food, personal care, and home care portfolio. Sir Kensington's gave Unilever a premium, clean-label condiment brand with cultural credibility that Hellmann's could not manufacture overnight.

In the acquisition announcement, Kees Kruythoff, then president of Unilever North America, said Unilever looked forward to using the companies' joint understanding of food trends and consumer preferences to grow Sir Kensington's significantly.² Matthew McCarthy, then vice president of foods at Unilever North America, said the deal aligned with Unilever's global sustainable nutrition strategy.²

The founders gave the expected reassurance. Ramadan said Sir Kensington's was honored to partner with a progressive, purpose-driven company. Norton said working with Unilever would allow the brand to expand distribution faster while holding true to its values.²

FoodNavigator-USA added a useful detail: the co-founders would continue running the business from Manhattan, and the deal was expected to close within weeks.¹ The same article reported the approximate $140 million figure from Bloomberg, while noting that official terms were undisclosed.¹

In plain English: Sir Kensington's had the trust. Unilever had the scale.

That trade can work. It can also change what a brand is allowed to become.

What Changed

Ownership moved from founder-led challenger to Unilever portfolio brand

Before the sale, Sir Kensington's identity was built around challenging Big Food convention. After the sale, it became a Unilever brand. That is not hidden if you look in the right places. Unilever's own brand page lists Sir Kensington's under its foods portfolio and describes the company as having been on a mission since 2010 to reimagine ordinary and overlooked foods.⁵

The tension is not secrecy. It is emphasis.

The emotional center of Sir Kensington's is still the mission, the mascot, the ingredient language, the B Corp badge, and the idea of making condiments with more care. The ownership center is Unilever, a multinational conglomerate that also sells Hellmann's, Knorr, Dove, Axe, Tresemmé, and Seventh Generation.²

For shoppers who care about independent ownership, that distinction matters.

The founders eventually left

At acquisition, Unilever said Ramadan and Norton would continue in their roles.² That was true at the time. It did not last.

In 2019, FoodNavigator-USA reported that Ramadan left Sir Kensington's in June of that year to become CEO of Hu Products. Ramadan told the outlet that he and Norton had no formal earn-out requiring them to stay, and that Norton took over as CEO after his departure.⁶

Norton later left too. NOSH reported in 2023 that Norton had departed Sir Kensington's in 2020 and later founded N+1 Ventures before unveiling Unfold Ventures, a $300 million consumer investment fund affiliated with FMR LLC, the parent company of Fidelity Investments.⁷

That timeline matters because founder presence is often used as a proxy for mission protection. It is not perfect. Founders can make bad calls, and corporate managers can make good ones. Still, when both founders leave after a sale, the brand's original voice loses power inside the system.

Sir Kensington's is now a Unilever asset, not a founder-run food company.

The flagship ketchup was discontinued

This is the clearest post-acquisition change.

In February 2023, Food & Wine reported that Sir Kensington's was ending production of its ketchup. Scott Norton wrote that ketchup was what brought the founders together in college in 2008, and that they had not imagined the flagship product ending this way.³

Food & Wine also reported Norton's explanation for why it happened: low margins, the sale of the company, and a refocus on mayonnaise. According to Norton, mayonnaise had grown to about 75% of Sir Kensington's business, while ketchup had dropped to about 10%.³

TASTE's reporting adds the sharper context. It described the ketchup as the product that started Sir Kensington's, then noted that after the Unilever acquisition, the brand announced it would stop producing ketchup while mustard and mayonnaise would remain.⁴ Norton called the decision a major disappointment and said the founders had been warned for months that it might happen.⁴

That is not a formula change. It is bigger.

The product that gave Sir Kensington's its reason to exist became too hard to justify inside the business. The company did not simply tweak the flagship. It stopped making it.

The company moved toward the products that scale

Mayonnaise is where Sir Kensington's found its post-ketchup business. That also fits Unilever's strengths. Unilever already knows mayonnaise through Hellmann's. It understands the category, the shelf set, the retailers, and the margins.

Food Dive's acquisition coverage said Sir Kensington's made mustard, mayonnaise, ketchup, and Fabanaise at the time of the sale.⁸ Unilever's current Sir Kensington's page describes a portfolio that includes mayonnaise, mustard, vegan mayo, globally inspired everything sauces, salad dressings, and ketchup.⁵

That last detail is awkward. Unilever's page still mentions ketchup, even though Food & Wine and TASTE both reported the product's discontinuation in 2023.³⁴⁵ Maybe the page is stale. Maybe some institutional copy did not get updated. Either way, it shows how brand pages can lag behind operating reality.

This is exactly why ownership-conscious consumers should not rely on polished brand copy alone.

Formula changes are not the main evidence here

We did not find a clean, public before-and-after ingredient record showing that Unilever broadly reformulated Sir Kensington's core products after the acquisition. That should be said plainly.

The evidence here is not "Unilever ruined the ingredients." The evidence is ownership, founder departure, product-line shift, and the discontinuation of the brand's original flagship product.

Those are enough.

For a brand built on challenging Big Ketchup, losing the ketchup is not a footnote. It is the story.

The Marketing Today

Unilever's current brand page for Sir Kensington's still leans into mission-heavy language. It says Sir Kensington's has been on a mission since 2010 to reimagine ordinary and overlooked foods with high-quality ingredients. It says every ingredient is non-GMO, every egg sourced is Organic Certified Humane Free Range, and the company became a Certified B Corporation in 2018.⁵

That page also says each product is rooted in uncompromising values and superior taste.⁵

Some of that may be accurate. It is also incomplete without the ownership context. A shopper reading only the brand language gets the cleaner, founder-coded version of the story. A shopper reading Unilever's corporate page gets the owner. A shopper reading Food & Wine or TASTE gets the missing ketchup chapter.

Put together, the picture is clear: Sir Kensington's still markets the values of an independent food challenger while operating as part of Unilever's food portfolio.

That does not make the products worthless. It does make the brand less transparent than it feels.

Why This Matters

Clean Directory is not anti-scale. A better condiment in more grocery stores can be a good thing. More shoppers avoiding high-fructose corn syrup or cheap oils is not a failure.

But ownership changes incentives.

An independent condiment company can keep making a lower-margin flagship because it defines the brand. A conglomerate has less patience for romance. It has channels, category managers, margin targets, portfolio priorities, and other brands to protect. If the original product no longer fits the operating model, it can disappear.

That is what happened to Sir Kensington's ketchup.

The lesson is not that Unilever is uniquely bad. The lesson is that acquisition changes the scoreboard. Before the sale, Sir Kensington's was proving that a small brand could challenge Big Ketchup. After the sale, Sir Kensington's had to make sense inside Big Food.

Those are different games.

Independent Alternatives

Raye's Mustard

Raye's Mustard is a 125-year-old independent mustard mill in Eastport, Maine. It still uses cold stone grinding, barrel aging, and recipes with more character than standard yellow mustard. If you bought Sir Kensington's for better mustard, Raye's is the cleaner independence story.

Yellowbird Foods

Yellowbird Foods is an Austin-based hot sauce company founded by Erin and George Milton. The sauces are pepper-forward, bright, and built for actual food rather than novelty heat. Good pick if Sir Kensington's everything sauces were your entry point.

Fly By Jing

Fly By Jing makes Sichuan chili crisp, Zhong sauce, chili oil, noodles, and seasonings. Founder Jing Gao built the company around the flavors of Chengdu and direct relationships with producers. It is not a ketchup replacement. It is a better answer to the question Sir Kensington's asked: why are pantry condiments so boring?

Barnacle Foods

Barnacle Foods makes kelp salsa, kelp hot sauce, chili crisp, pickles, and other Alaska-made pantry goods from wild-harvested kelp. Founder-run, based in Juneau, and rooted in a real regional food system. That matters.

Bottom Line

Sir Kensington's built a real challenger brand. The ketchup was different, the packaging had personality, and the company helped make people care about condiments again.

But Sir Kensington's is no longer independent. Unilever bought it in 2017, both founders have since left, and the original flagship ketchup was discontinued in 2023. That is the documented record.

If you still like the mayonnaise or mustard, that is your call. The better choice for ownership-conscious shoppers is to buy from independent condiment makers whose operating reality still matches their story.

Start with Raye's Mustard for mustard, Yellowbird for hot sauce, Fly By Jing for chili crisp and sauces, and Barnacle Foods when you want something genuinely different.