YouSaid · the spoken record

Mark Ramadan

lines on the record: 47
first: 2025-06-05
most recent: 2025-06-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Big ones. I mean, all of these are classic business issues, right? How do you compete with the incumbent? How do you make it through a period of high cost? How do you think about product development and innovation? How do you get retailers to listen to you? How do you build awareness for something that's brand new? These are all the challenges that virtually every business worth building. So yeah, absolutely. It all felt all the categories were different, but all the problems were very familiar. I forget who said this, but someone more famous than me said, every time your business doubles, it breaks. And so running into these issues is something that everyone has to deal with. And being open and vulnerable to talk about it and get feedback is also okay. I felt like I was constantly putting on some sort of suit of armor every day, like pretending things were great, pretending everything was going well, including with investors even when they could have helped. And so I think being aware that problems are constant and that people are.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thank you for saying that because it is very hard, and that's a lot of the things we're doing right now, and it is very depressing, and it feels like I should be such a success story right now with the numbers that we have and the journey we've been on, but it doesn't feel that way in this moment. And so I'm hoping that all the efforts we're making right now will soon come out on the other side of that. And it feels good to know I'm not failing, that it is something that companies go through.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Something's got to give. And so I would just make sure you know it's something that everyone's had to go through in right sizing Opex as revenue catches up and it's hard, but it's often the thing that you must do to get through to that next phase of business in conjunction with other things. So it's often not let's cut Opex and lose people and therefore everything will be saved or let's invest over here and we won't have to cut people. Sometimes it's both. And sometimes it's not about cutting. It's about, you know, reducing the raises or reducing the healthcare. There's all sorts of, you can do this with a fine-tooth comb, and it's very hard and it's very depressing, but it is very normal.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One other, this is maybe just going back to the OpEx for a second. I just wanted to share a perspective on this, which is just that in the messy process of building a business, sometimes you have to invest before growth and sometimes you invest too much before growth. And I, in both businesses, I've run multiple times, have we been faced with the reality that we have invested too much in anticipation of sales that never came or came, but came much later. And I've been through incredibly painful moments where we've had to let members of the team go because, you know, my fault in hiring too quickly or putting too much fixed costs on the business, it's not always people. Sometimes it's software and services, whatever. And we had to retrench, you know, and in a world where money is limited and you aren't taking investor capital and debt is scary because you have covenants and you have restrictions.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, we've done some teethers, we've done our training spoon is like really, really popular with the feeding specialist. One thing we've learned is the safety considerations when you're making baby products are just really painful. And so you want to always stay away from moving parts and magnets and too much of that stuff while we are still so small. But we were hoping to find some new items at this event we're at that we could maybe just private label, find something that already exists that complements our product line that we can just put our brand on.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have you thought of also making, I know you saw accessories, but also making the toys that the tactile things, I know you make a couple things like a spoon and a, but other things like noise makers or things that you guys make that you would attach to the tray.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's one thing you could do, you could negotiate some of the discounts they take a little bit more aggressively. I'd also say almost every brand that I work with, including the ones I used to run, dramatically reduced investment in e-commerce, meta and others because the problem you're facing is the same problem everyone's facing. It's just not efficient. And so a lot of people move those funds out of online into point of sale marketing. So making sure that people are aware that it's in Walmart, for example, or Target. When you get into those stores, really focusing on services like Instacart, I've seen that have a much higher, I'm talking like two to three times higher ROI than spending on meta. So, not just maintaining your dollars, but actually shifting your dollars into more profitable retail marketing.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Great. Well, so I would say there's no silver bullet because what you're describing is a very common issue when you're, if you're growing quickly and you don't have a pile of investor capital, then financing your inventory growth will always be a challenge that you face, right? Unless you're gross margins are 70, 80, 90%. And even then, depending on how quickly you're growing, you're always going to have needs that outstrip your current cash, right? There's no silver bullet answer. I would say that one thing that you can explore, depending on how excited the buyers are for your products at these various stores, is negotiate an agreement so that you can get your first few payments sooner than normal. So, you know, if you have set payment terms of net 30 or net 60, whatever it might be, you could ask for exceptions for the first couple of payments to find.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In about 400 independent retailers right now, and that's just mom and pop shops that have reached out to us saying, you know, we love your products, we'd love to sell them in our shop. I'm actually sitting right now in a VRBO in Vegas because we're at the Baby Expo. It's the big retail event of the year for baby stores.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Certainly true, it's marketing, and obviously it broadens your exposure to a huge audience. What about all of the little retailers in between online and Walmart and Target? Have you spoken to local retailers? I don't know who your big one would be in where you live, but what about all the smaller ones?”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, in a normal world, our gross margins are fantastic. I think we took a lot of missteps with marketing in the last year that helped put us in this position. We're correcting that this year. And that's kind of how I'm looking at the retail opportunities. It's not only is it maybe some bigger orders, but we're getting in front of more faces because people are going back to stores. And the online marketing is not working as well as it used to. So I also look at Walmart as an target as Know just sitting there on the shelf or being in the baby section is marketing.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Understood, and your inventory doesn't have a shelf life to it, right? You can. Right. O And then another question is from a gross margin perspective, do you feel like you are covering in a normal world is your gross margin high enough to cover your costs on an ongoing basis?”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, we have actually a fantastic hometown bank. So I've since closed the home equity line of credit and we've opened inventory lines of credit with the hometown bank. They are currently maxed out last year. Q1 was the biggest quarter we ever had. And so we ordered a lot of inventory to support that growth for the rest of the year. And then, you know, Facebook and Google ads started underperforming and the year kind of fell apart. And so we ended up being stuck with a lot of inventory and not being able to pay down those lines of credit yet.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“An important part to not get lost in the question. One sort of high level point is that retail is a blessing and a curse. It can be a blessing because large customers can mean large orders and large orders can give you certainty and predictability. It can give you leverage with a bank facility, which I'll get to. But the downside is that they aren't more expensive to work with and you get your cash much less quickly. So when someone buys online, you get the credit card payment right away. When Walmart buys, it might be 30, 60, 90, 120 days until you get paid. And you often don't get paid for 100% of what you ship because in retail, there's all sorts of markdowns and deductions. So one thing to just keep in mind is almost inevitably if you launch a retail, things will get messier before they get better in terms of your cash and inventory position. One question I had is, do you have, I heard that you have a home equity line of credit separately for inventory financing? Have you ever spoken with a low-carbon?”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So getting to the messy middle is still an accomplishment, by the way. So congratulations. You know, 14 million of sales means there's real product market fit. There are families that love this. So that is...”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My salary, and then we needed health benefits. So the company paid for health benefits. And before I knew it, operating expenses just kept creeping up and up. And the more you sell, the more general liability insurance costs and the more all these other things cost. Cash flow was never an issue in the first few years. And so I didn't pay close enough attention. And now cash flow is an issue. But we have several large opportunities this year. We just launched on target.com and we are onboarding right now with Walmart. And Walmart really loves our products and they love our innovation. And it's an amazing opportunity that's going to cost a lot of money and just scares me to death. So that's another big part of the story that is where I'm kind of stuck in this messy middle.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We definitely recognize that there was competition, but I don't think we saw Heinz as the big scary competitor, if that makes sense. If anything, we saw inertia as the competitor. People are on, you know, they're not impulse buying different ketchups 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 from Heinz? And so most of what we did at the very beginning was get in front of people so they could taste it. So that was doing demos and stores, most of which at the beginning Scott and I did ourselves. Or we would be on restaurant tables or hotel room service trays because those are opportunities for people to actually taste it. Because at the end of the day, what we were really trying to build was a emotional taste experience. And if it's just sitting on a shelf and it's one jar out of 50 and people are on autopilot anyway, that's no way to get someone's attention. We really had to cut through.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, though, your idea of the wall of hot sauces was great. There used to be a restaurant in Hudson, New York in the Hudson Valley. It was a Mexican restaurant, and they had like literally a hundred hot sauces that you could pick from. And it was so fun because every meal was completely different.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I guess I would only say, do whatever you can to keep track of the community that you're building and stay in touch with them, you know, whether you have a newsletter which costs you nothing, right? Or even just like some sort of way to keep track of who's coming in and out to actually stay in touch, to let them know the events that are coming up, to let them know what kind of specials you're doing. Again, these are like the super low cost ways to stay close to that community and remind them that you're still there.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In house, I mean, this is not, I don't see this on your website. Maybe you're advertising that in the restaurant. But man, I mean, I feel like as part of your brand Bible, we make everything in house. You make your tortillas. I'm eating that. You make your hot sauce like you steep the chilies and vinegar and you're making it. I want to try that, but you have to tell me that.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Aren't delicious, but it's tenuous if they're 100 feet away, right? But how do you create something that's more that's emotional? That's cathartic for people. That's the beauty of local small businesses. Think you can do that through products like I was saying with the hot sauce. I think you can do it through menu integrations, whatever's fresh from the farmer's market. Chipotle will never do that. And I think you can do it in ways that are cheaper free to you. Like I mentioned this earlier, but invite a local musician to perform every Thursday.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Those that are loaded up with debt can't focus on operations, and those loaded up with equity investors also are distracted from finding opportunities with their operations. So I would definitely focus on, I mean, I'm not saying don't raise money in the future, but typically you would want to wait to do that until you have the concept that's humming and buzzing and you feel like I can't help it open a second location. And I think you get there by creating a cult following, right? I mean, Chipotle scaled, sweet green scaled, all of these businesses scaled because they first had a home base that had a cult following. Yours will look different than Chipotle's. But again, not to repeat myself, but I'd encourage you to really think about how do you deliver a service that is not tacos to your guests. You may serve tacos, but what's the service? What is the environment they're walking into? Why are they coming there? And if the answer is because your tacos are better, I don't think that's a long-term sustainable differentiation from Chipotle. Let's say you're”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would just say on the fundraising side, I would not recommend raising funds until you have a concept that you feel confident that is working. Not only because I think it puts you in a position where you now are suddenly owing people money and you don't necessarily have the runway ahead of you to pay them back, either through scaling or through selling the business. But I think it distracts you from what should be your core mission now, which is how do you deliver something that's valuable to your community rather than how do you pay back your debt facility or pay back your investors? I work with a lot of restaurants and”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We serve at the restaurant, you know. And again, we never thought that we were going to be put on the field to compete in such a big league. And we didn't choose this. It happened. And now Chipotle coming in place, you know, we know that they're going to take 30% of our bottom margin, you know, and that is our concern because being a seasonal business where our summer months are incredible and our winter month are a disaster. You know, 20% will really damage the business. So we're in front of a situation that we need to take action. And that's our”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Seasonal shops out in the north fork of Long Island or in the Hamptons or all the beach communities around the US. And they're all sort of like multi-factor places. They serve coffee in the mornings and then they have delightful sandwiches in the afternoon. And there's also a bookstore. And maybe they also sell toys for kids because people want to buy toys in the summer and there's probably also ice cream in the afternoon. And I'm not saying you should do any of those necessarily, but if you shift your thinking from we are a taco restaurant competing with Chipotle to we are a community destination for summers in Cape May, serving great food, which happens to be Mexican food. I think you can really change the value expectation people have of your restaurant. If I go in and, you know, I'm faced with beautiful design objects and you have comfy chairs and there's a James Baird nominee behind the counter and you say, well, the tacos aren't eight bucks, they're 12 bucks or 13 bucks. Maybe it's a very different story.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is maybe a contrarian opinion, but I think that the word to focus on in terms of your guess is maybe less price or cost and more value, right? Value is like price meets expectations. That's just one definition. But you could raise your price and also raise the experience that you're delivering or raise the ante on expectation. And people may well be willing to pay that. My fear for you Again, I haven't been to your restaurant, so I don't know if this is the case, but my fear is if you engage in a price war with Chipotle, you will definitely lose. You will never have the cheapest, most profitable tacos, right? And so that's a losing fight from day one. What you really want to do is figure out what is the community center that your guests are looking for during this summer season in Cape May, right? Right. And I can think of so many little beautiful.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lucas, I'm looking at your website and you just mentioned this idea that, hey, trust a chef and all stuff, I know this because I was looking at your bio. It's just not on your website, or it's not easy to find. You're a nominee. You're a James Beard nominee. I mean, you have this incredible pedigree, and I wonder why on the website it doesn't say tacos from a James Beard nominee or, you know, or chef driven. I mean, Steve Ells, who started Chipotle, was a trained chef. He did go to culinary school, and his dream, we did him on the show many years ago. His dream was to build a Michelin three-star restaurant. That's why he started Chipotle to finance it. It never built a Michelin restaurant, but Chipotle was a result. But it was chef-driven. I feel like just from the entry point, whether it's a website or coming into the restaurant, you need to tell me this is driven by a chef.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is the environment? I mean, the food, maybe you both serve tacos, but that's almost incidental to the emotional experience you're delivering”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Expected level of quality at significant scale, but no one would call it their local taco spot, right? I mean, what Chipotle is not good at is they're not good at creating a local integrated community feel in any of their stores. And so my initial instinct is don't compete with Chipotle doing what Chipotle does. Chipotle is going to out Chipotle you 10 days out of 10, right? They've built the machine to do that. But when you go into a local restaurant, you expect to have local feel there, whether that's local performers or musicians, local additions to the menu, or even a little local market there. These are just random examples of how do you make your store not feel like a competitor to the chain restaurant next door, but actually its own completely new thing. And one part of that equation is you. It's the personalities behind the counter, right? It's the people. Because what is a hospitality experience, if not people? And then the second.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, first of all, I'm happy to hear that you made it out of the pandemic and you have a concept that's working. So congratulations because a lot of restaurateurs and chefs did not. So you should feel at least proud of where you've gotten to. I think at the highest level, like competing with a monolith, like any major company, you just have to recognize there are some things that they do very well”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Mark, you faced a giant competitor, Heinz, with your ketchup with Sir Kensington's, and of course Lucas is facing the impending arrival of Chipotle 150 feet from his taco shop, which is obviously a massive multi-billion dollar.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And this is not about. I love plum. My grandfather was a plumber, so I love plumbers, and I want to give you guys business. But I'm just saying, you know, it's the call, it's the wait, it's being at the house between noon and 8 p.m. And then you're like, I met the house from noon until 8, and then it's 7.45, and then he arrives. And he's like, yeah, I gave you an eight-hour window. And you're like, are you kidding me”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I've had that exact issue. I've had a bad sigch. The one, I don't do the cooking in the house, so therefore I do all the dishes in the house, and I've definitely, I'm the one who's cleaning out that sink trap three times during a wash.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Could make it. And so I would go through that same check, create the checklist. And if you don't have any money to buy data, which I assume you wouldn't necessarily be buying data here, you can go to your local stores. Whoever you're selling Gypsy to today just”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're thinking about product development, one encouragement I would have for you is as much as you are focused on solving a real problem, and that should be your starting point, there's lots of different sizes of categories in the general store that you're playing in, right? And I don't know what the relative size of a sync catcher is versus a hair catcher for the bathroom versus XYZ product that I could go buy from Ace. But as much as you can figure out what are the category sizes, what is the depth of competition, what is the turn rate on these items, what's the margin that the manufacturers and or the retailers are making, those should all be factors as you're going through the process of figuring out what do we make next and Sir Kensington's was no less brutal and ruthless about going through that qualification. There's a million things we could make. We ended up in mayonnaise for lots of reasons, not just because it seemed like an obvious adjacency, but also because it was bigger than ketchup. And the turn rate was faster and the margin structure was better. And our co-packers.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that took longer. It was harder, but it was a unique solution that suited us. So I think the equivalent here is true. Don't just come out with 10 things and be like a slightly more expensive Oxo because they already have Oxo.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, from a retailer's perspective, it's always easier to have fewer, bigger providers. So that's probably why you're getting push in that direction. For your specific brand, I mean, I looked at it online. I think it's beautiful. I love that you're solving a specific problem in a different way. So it's not obvious to me that there's anything wrong with your brand. And I would strongly recommend you don't breach your own brand values there, right? I'm 100% in agreement with you that if your brand is about solving problems in a way no one solved it before, then you have to stay true to that brand commitment that you've made. And not to make it all about condiments, but, you know, when we launched mayonnaise, it would have been really easy to just say, well, let's just launch like a mayonnaise that looks like every mayonnaise in Whole Foods, but we didn't. It took us a long time to say, well, how would Sir Kensington's make a mayonnaise in keeping with the quality of the ketchup? And that was by creating a supply chain for certified humane free-range eggs. We were the first company in the country to use free-range.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Take a quick step back. If you think about how do retailers make money, what's the retail business model? And why might they be frustrated with a single SKU brand? Ultimately, they're not really in the business of solving consumer problems. They're in the business of making money. And so for every vendor that they work with, there is some amount of fixed costs associated with that, right? Communication time, invoicing, chargebacks, and so on. And so the easiest thing for ACE or for true hardware to have is like three vendors to only work with Oxo and two other ones, right? A good, better, best model, which is why, like, if you take the ketchup category circa 15 years ago, there was a good, better, best brand. That's it. There was the value brand. There was Hines and maybe an expensive one because the fewer brands you have in the same amount of space, the less work it is to manage your shelf and to make money from your shelf.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Somebody to come in that has 20 products that they can just hang on their shelves and it works out. We don't have that. And I've gone through it in my head and thought, hmm, maybe I should just bring out products that are status quo. They're not anything special, but they're just more products to have in a line. But I don't know if that want to branch out into being a kitchen utensil brand, right? I think we want to be an innovative kitchen and plumbing brand. I'm designing right now a hair catcher for a bathroom sink. We do have a stopper. And yeah, I mean, I've, gosh, it's hard because I don't want to dilute our brand because I think what makes us so special is that the product is actually better. You know, it's a better mousetrap, if you will. And I don't want to come out with a spatula that's the same as every other spatula because I feel like it doesn't, you know, it's not really what our brand is about.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think this is maybe related to your bigger question, but do you have other products in your innovation pipeline that you're working on, like other problems in the kitchen you're trying to solve or not right now?”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so this all started to take it back a little bit, I guess. I was in a house that was on septic. So we didn't have a garbage disposal. We had a metal strainer that broke, and I had to go to the store to get a new one, and it was nine or ten bucks and it broke after two weeks. And I got, you know, I guess it annoyed me enough that I decided to, you know, I was like, I think I could probably do a better job at this. But, you know, my idea behind the design to get to your question was I wanted it to fit below the rim of the sink. So food and things don't get caught or go under it. And I wanted it to not clog. So you don't have to empty it out five times while you're doing the dishes. And we achieved that. It fits inside the drain nice and snug. Nothing sneaks past it. And it actually, you know, it can fill up completely because the hollow central stem drains water if the basket's full. And it just keeps rocking, man. And it's non-stick, so it empties into the trash can. No problem. And it's significantly different than any other strainer. I don't know of any fully flexible.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I know that you're not going to hold this against me because you're not part of the company anymore. But, you know, I have a you, I think you know this. I have this thing about buying mayonnaise. I think everyone should just make it. Just get the food processor and just, you know, pour the oil into the egg, go in with the processor.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I think the other thing is you sort of form opinions about the category and about the competitors in the category that are sometimes informed by fact, but often they're informed by emotion. So for example, we had this expectation that people were more just as or more brand loyal to Hellman's and Best Foods Mayo as they are to Heinz simply because it's just as dominant from a market share position. But it turns out that wasn't the case, that people were not as emotionally connected to mayonnaise as they were to ketchup. Ketchup is associated with all of these like childhood memories for people, whereas mayonnaise is just not. And so that was just a big learning that we had, which is really forget about all the assumptions that you formed in the category. And Price was a big one too. Avocado oil mayonnaise, like you're talking about, ended up becoming ours and primal kitchens and others' biggest products. But that was 10, 11, 12 a jar, which would have been unheard of at the time that we started the company. So you just, you know, you never really know what boundary.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we spent three hard years doing nothing but making and selling catch up. And there were many times where we felt like the business would die that way because the traction on the ketchup was not as fast as we wanted it to be or the adoption was not where we expected. And getting into mayonnaise was partly because we felt like we had to do something to try and pivot and save the company. Also because we were getting requests from it, from retailers. And as soon as we launched it, it really took off on its own. I mean, we were selling more mayonnaise within six months than we were selling after three years of selling catch up. And one of the things I think we learned from that is maybe the most obvious lesson, you don't know what your best-selling product is going to be until after you make it.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And I remember Sir Kensington started out as a specialty ketchup, right? But actually, the business didn't really start to take off until you went, he branched out. You went to mayonnaise. That's right. And then a bunch of other condiments. And actually, crazily enough, I mean, the ketchup was eventually discontinued in 2023 because the mayonnaise and the other condiments were doing better. What kind of lesson did you learn from that sort of being willing to pivot or to really branch out from the original Product”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Alright, let's get to it. My guest today is Mark Ramadan, the co-founder of Sir Kensington's. It's a condiment brand that he launched with a college buddy and with no prior food or business experience. They took on the giants of the food industry like Heinz. Mark, welcome to the advice line.”
2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
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2025-06-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Mark Ramadan of Sir Kensington's (June 2024) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT