Sea Salt Business Plan, With a Projection

A sea salt business plan is a plan for patience and pans. The raw material is free, but turning seawater into flakes takes hauling, settling, filtering, boiling it down and hours of low heat, so the cost of a tin is fuel and time, and the plan is about how many tins a week the pans can make. In the example below, a sea salt maker in Alaska sells flake salt in tins direct and to shops, smoked and herb salts and gift trios, and ends its first year about $15,100 ahead on $48,800 of sales, with every hour paid at $20. Below is a description example, each part of the plan, the water and testing, the first year month by month, the startup budget, and a free template.

The short version

• Describe the business in a paragraph: the salt, the water, who buys, the goals.
• Cost a tin from the seawater: fuel, hours, the tin and label, the fees.
• The pans set the pace: plan the tins a week they can make.
• Direct tins earn about 65%; shops about 41%.
• Infused salts and gift trios earn more on a few cents of smoke or herbs.
• Test the water and the finished salt, batch by batch.
• TaroStack records every batch's yield and test, and keeps tins, jars and orders on one list. More below.

Part 1: the business description

Kachemak Sea Salt Co., a made-up sea salt maker in Homer, Alaska, I use in these examples, writes:

Kachemak Sea Salt Co. hauls and filters seawater from Kachemak Bay, boils it down with propane and finishes flake salt in shallow pans, and sells it plain, smoked over alder and blended with herbs, online, at markets, and through about 30 shops and grocers. In its first year it aims to sell 640 tins and jars a month.

Part 2: what each sale costs

The hours are nearly half of every tin's cost. Where each channel's margin ends up, and how a month adds up at full speed, is in salt business profit margin.

Part 3: customers and prices

In a month at full speed the direct tins bring $1,548 of the $4,111 of contribution, the infused salts $943, the shops $870 and the gift trios $750. Shops sell the most tins and earn the least on each; they're where cooks discover the salt. Wholesale pricing is in how to price handmade items for wholesale.

Part 4: the water and the testing

Collect seawater away from harbors, stream mouths, outfalls and boat traffic, and not after heavy rain. Let it settle, filter it, and test it with a lab before the first batch and on a schedule after, along with the finished salt, so you know what's in it. Your state may license the salt house as a food processor. The salt is a packaged food, so the label carries its name, net weight and your details. This is general information, not legal advice. Records of each batch's test are what let you answer a buyer's questions later; how to keep them is in what is a batch record.

Part 5: the first year, month by month

Fixed costs are $1,075 every month: the salt house ($500), licenses ($40), insurance ($70), the website ($40), market fees ($150), ads ($200), water and salt testing ($40), and software and card fees ($35). Sales start at 15% of full speed:

The year's sales are $48,824 and the profit $15,052, with every hour paid at $20. A full month is about 640 tins and jars, about 170 pounds of salt.

Part 6: the startup budget

The $7,000 spent before working cash is earned back in month 10, when the cash reaches $8,981.

Get the template

Download the sea salt business plan workbook. Four sheets: your tins, jars and gift sets with price, variable cost and a month at full speed; the first year, month by month, with sales, profit and cash; your fixed costs; and your startup budget with working cash. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.

Where this stops working

Batches that each take days, each with its own water test and its own yield, flakes and fine salt kept apart, tins, jars and gift boxes bought in different quantities, and 30 shops ordering. A notebook can't say which batch a shop's tins came from, or what a pound really cost this month.

How TaroStack does it

TaroStack records every batch's yield and test, and keeps tins, jars and orders on one list.

Each batch a lot. A batch records how much salt it made, flake and fine, good and rejected, gets a lot and a date, and its batch record form carries your own fields, such as the water test, with limits and a sign-off.

Tins from batches. Filling tins takes the salt and the tins off stock, and tins, jars and gift boxes come up on a reorder list in days of cover.

Shops on one list. Each shop's order is a sales order, and the lots each shop got are recorded as it ships.

Batches, batch records, lots and sales orders are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.

Questions people also ask

Is a sea salt business profitable?

It can be. In the example, a sea salt maker ends its first year about $15,100 ahead on $48,800 of sales, with every hour paid at $20.

How much does it cost to start a sea salt business?

In the example, $10,000, with the evaporating pans and burners, the water equipment, the first tins and $3,000 of working cash the biggest parts.

How do you make sea salt to sell?

Collect clean seawater, settle and filter it, boil it down, finish the flakes over low heat, dry and pack them, and test the water and salt with a lab.

What does a sea salt business sell?

In the example, flake salt in tins direct and to shops, smoked and herb salts, and gift trios, with the shops selling the most tins.