Lubec firm, national chain market sea salt

LUBEC – A world-class sea salt product made in Lubec is now in a classy store – Whole Foods Market.

Founded in September 1980, Whole Foods is the world’s leading natural and organic supermarket, and now the chain is selling Quoddy Mist sea salt at its newly opened store in Portland.

Eventually, the Down East specialty product could end up in Whole Food stores nationally.

Based in Austin, Texas, the company has more than 185 stores in 30 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Canada and the United Kingdom. The chain also has more than 85 stores in various stages of development. The company projects that its estimated sales will be $12 billion by 2010.

Clayton Lank is the owner of Quoddy Mist, which shares space in a rambling former sardine factory on Lubec Narrows with scallopers, sea cucumber exporters, a lobster company and a sea urchin research firm.

He took over the business from a frustrated Massachusetts developer in 2005, using money from the Lubec Revolving Loan Fund and financing through Sunrise County Economic Development Council.

“It’s where we want to be. It’s in the high-end market and we’re very pleased to be associated with them,” Lank said Thursday of Whole Foods Market.

Before establishing a relationship with the national chain, Lank marketed his product at trade fairs and specialty stores in Washington and Hancock counties.

Peter Boyce, chairman of the board that controls the town’s revolving loan fund, said Thursday the fund helped Lank get started. “The revolving loan fund is a jobs program,” he said.

Quoddy Mist employs three people now, but Lank wants to see that number grow as the sale of sea salt grows.

Elizabeth Sprague, small business coordinator for Down East Business Alliance, has also worked with Lank.

“Clayton has been very active with us, with our series of Incubator Without Walls workshops, as well as other special workshops that we have done to support, develop and expand microbusinesses here in Washington County,” she said Thursday. She said her agency is working with Lank to explore ways to expand his business.

Lubec’s town administrator, Maureen Glidden, said the town learned Wednesday that the Lubec site where the sea salt is manufactured is now part of a Pine Tree Zone, which means benefits for the company.

Quoddy Mist can produce up to 4,000 pounds of sea salt each month. It is sold in bottles and jars, bulk bags and blended bulk bags. The end product can look like giant icicles, tiny snowflakes or little squares – all crystals that are finding a huge market in organic stores and restaurants.

There are fine chefs in Maine and Massachusetts who won’t use anything but Maine sea salt. From a high-class restaurant in Cambridge, Mass., to Washington County Community College just up the road, Quoddy Mist is quickly becoming a kitchen staple.

The process from briny water to gourmet salt is a simple one. Quoddy Mist takes seawater, heats it, evaporates it, grinds the salt, and then packages it. The company makes 12 different blends, some of which include wasabi and seven dried sea vegetables.

But how did a tiny company in Lubec meet a corporate giant like Whole Foods? Over coffee at the Food for Thought Conference last fall in Bowdoin College in Brunswick.

Susan Phinney was there. She is what Whole Foods calls its local product “forager” – the person who seeks out new goods for the company. She was trying to find new products for the Portland store and liked the idea that Quoddy Mist was made in Maine.

Available only at its Portland store now, the sea salt eventually could be sold in Whole Foods’ other New England stores in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island.

Phinney was in Lubec Thursday to talk about the future.

Structurally, the company is divided into regions, with local products handled in local stores.

“It’s already been decided by the company that it’s a product we want, it has the quality standard we have to have, and the consumer wants to buy it,” Phinney explained.

Once a product is sold in six stores in a region, it is then looked at nationally. “Then we begin to ask ourselves and the supplier whether it makes sense to have the product sent to our distribution center and repackaged into the stores,” Phinney said.

And that’s Lank’s goal – he wants to grow with Whole Foods and eventually be in more of its supermarkets.