“I have always been a little bit weird, I fully admit that,” says Ben Jacobsen, founder of Jacobsen Salt Co. “Right before I started my company, I was at a friend of mine’s wedding in Mexico... I went down to the beach and got sea water and made salt when we were there over the weekend to see what it would taste like. That was definitely an odd thing, making salt at a wedding party, and it was fun, too.”
After tasting good-quality flaky salt in Denmark atop an arugula salad, Jacobsen spent two and a half years hauling sea water every weekend from the Washington and Oregon coasts in a U-Haul hooked up to his Subaru Forester to find the perfect salt back at home.
“There was some skepticism and some like, “What’s Ben up to now?’ But once they tasted it, they got it,” he says.
Since 2011, Jacobsen Salt Co. has been making Pure Kosher Sea Salt and seasoned blends like Infused Black Garlic Salt.
“You find a way because you’re excited about the opportunity to create something that didn’t exist before.”
