The sun is just rising, and Trey King is already waist-deep in the, to him, perfectly salty Gulf.

Taking trip after trip to fill five gallon buckets, one in each hand, and depositing the water in a larger container back up the shore in his trailer, like Mickey Mouse in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," he will eventually end up with a 2-ounce jar of Fairhope Flake. He'll either add a seasoning blend reminiscent of Old Bay or an umami blend, or he'll leave the coarse flakes alone for a "bright, briny taste" that has been slowly crystalized using traditional filtering methods.

King, 31, is the founder of Fairhope Salt Company, having grown up in Daphne and moved to the Fairhope area four years ago after a stint in Atlanta. Other than receiving help from his wife, Gabrielle, with tasks such as filling jars and putting on labels, he is the sole operating force behind the company that has a waiting list a month out for his certified, at-home produced seasoning products.

Though King has been cooking for his family for a decade and has always been interested in food, he didn’t get into the business of it until he had what he described as a cooking renaissance more recently.

Around 2020, he and his wife were in an IKEA store when they decided to buy a three-pack of flaky salt for their kitchen, which contained smoked salt, mushroom salt and sea salt. For King’s birthday last year, his sister got him steak from Snake River Farms, which came with two jars of Jacobsen salt, a sea salt company based out of Portland, Oregon. It was events like these that sparked an interest in salt making, having realized how a simple, widely used ingredient can affect a meal.

When he moved back to Baldwin County, one of the first things he did was purchase five food-safe gallon buckets to begin his salt making journey. Despite his first batch being “an absolute disaster,” the perfectionist within him led him into a deep dive into the art of salt making.

“Every batch I do, you have to account for a lot of different things,” King said. “That second batch was good, and from then, man, I was hooked.”

QUALITY OVER SPEED

The process is manual and time-consuming, but luckily for King, he has a large source to start with: collecting saltwater at the beach.

Around every two weeks, at the crack of dawn, King drives to Gulf Shores, going to the public beach by The Hangout to scoop up water from the shore into his food-safe buckets. He gets there early to beat the crowds and their sunscreen and other potential contaminants. The quality of the water, and therefore salt, is that finicky.

He pours the buckets into a 55-gallon drum, letting it settle for a day back at home in Fairhope to allow any particles to settle to the bottom. He then filters the water through a proprietary filtration system he built himself, which concentrates minerals while also removing impurities. He puts the concentrated brine on trays directly within sunlight to initiate evaporation. In the sun, salt crystals form. He harvests them by hand and packs the end result into jars, which are then labeled.

He said each bucket produces roughly a 1-to-5 ratio of salt to water, with a five-gallon bucket of water producing around one pound of salt.

From collection to jar, the process takes between two to three weeks. King said while he could rush the process, he prioritizes quality salt that is both good and safe.

Weather also affects harvesting. When it rains, he has to wait a few days before he can go to the beach to harvest again, as the rain brings in water from Mobile Bay to the Gulf, with factors such as the ongoing dredging and coal ash issues affecting the Bay's water quality.

He goes to The Hangout specifically as it is logistically easier for him to access the beach with his equipment as well as being a safe distance away from Mobile Bay. King said he has learned through experience that the spot simply makes the best salt.

“It’s a really big responsibility that people are choosing to ingest things that I make, and it’s really, really important to me that I put forth not just a good product, but a safe product, and so I always want to make sure that if I got to wait a couple days to collect water, that’s OK,” King said. “If I gotta do that, it’s about making sure that there’s nothing that’s going to be in that salt that may hurt somebody or may foul the product.”

King works for a software company as vice president of sales, but when he isn’t on the clock, he and his wife are running Fairhope Salt Company out of their home. King is cottage food certified with the health department and has received all the business licenses he needs to operate direct-to-consumer, but he is looking to build the systems he needs to produce the salt required to meet demand. King said he currently has a backlog of around 250 orders that need to be fulfilled.

“I can make good salt, but making good salt is not that hard. Making great salt consistently, that’s hard, and so it’s been a whirlwind of one thing after another, big rock after big rock, but when you love something, it doesn’t really feel like you’re working, and it’s definitely how I feel with this,” King said.

Despite the challenges of running a small business out of his home, his customers have been patient with their orders, and he finds joy when he drops off an order. In one instance, he delivered to a customer who also had an expensive French grey salt. The customer raved about his product and said it was better than the grey salt.

“Each time I get to drop off a jar of salt to somebody or one of these Bay blends or umami blend or fine salt and people are just really excited and they just love to talk to me about it, it’s the best feeling in the whole world, and it shows me that this is what I’m supposed to be doing,” King said. “It makes every bit of the hard days worth it when I get to do that.”

Visit www.fairhopesaltcompany.com for more information.