Today we’d like to introduce you to Maureen Cacioppo. She and her team share their story with us below:
Like many small-batch food brands, Florida Pure Sea Salt was born from a marriage of passions. Founder Maureen Cacioppo feels at home near the sea, having worked in the nonprofit outdoor education sector for years. She also comes from a large family who loves to eat and cook, instilling a deep respect for the way food brings people together within her.
Our best guess is that this special combination, and maybe a little bit of magic, drove Maureen to harvest sea salt as a hobby. She tried and failed and tried again, and eventually began enjoying the chemistry process and history of salt. She knew she was onto something bigger than a hobby when she found herself creating a consistently delicious and pure product.
Maureen’s relationship with food began at a young age watching her grandmother carefully handle ingredients her grandfather gently picked from their garden. Everything was cooked low and slow. You could taste the love that went into it. Her family’s days were busy growing up, but they always made time to sit at the table and talk with each other and connect.
Florida Pure Sea Salt has carried that level of intention, care, and love through every step of the business. We filter our water and don’t rush the process. Extracting our salt can take anywhere from four days to two months.
Our sea salt doesn’t have any anti-clumping agents or other chemicals, therefore maintaining all the 80-plus beautiful minerals our bodies need.
Food is a thread that connects us all and salt is always a part of making our food experiences outstanding. Florida Pure Sea Salt is proud to create a clean, delicious finishing salt of the highest quality that tastes absolutely delicious.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
As a small business owner, a large part of your job description is navigating challenges. Like so many other businesses in the time of COVID, we’re continuing to experience supply chain issues. Those issues hit us later than most and was actually quite a surprise. Because we control the process in much of what we do and use American companies for what we don’t, we didn’t think we’d have the same problems as others. Turns out, we did.
Our American bottle company couldn’t get the supplies they needed to make our bottles, and then they ran into staffing issues. Our industrial dehydrator broke and when we reached out to the American equipment manufacturer, one of the parts we needed came from overseas so we had to wait…and wait…and wait. In the meantime, you come up with the best solutions you can in order to keep moving forward and your team working. It put us outside of our comfort zone and drove us to be more creative.
As a result, we came out with our salt pouches that are made out of recycled material and are recyclable. The cost of packaging is less expensive, so we’re able to pass along those savings to our customers.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Florida Pure Sea Salt?
Florida Pure Sea Salt is a certified Women-Owned Business, as well as a certified National LGBT Chamber of Commerce-owned business. We’re also going through the certification process of becoming a B Corp certified company, incorporating a new kind of business model that balances purpose and profit.
What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
People want to connect with their food in a deeper way and support businesses that care. We love this and feel absolutely the same. We have an opportunity to affect our community, team, and the environment, and we want to affect each of them positively.
Throughout 2021 we are committed to helping a different cause each month: 20% of the proceeds from each custom Salts for a Cause jar will go to a designated nonprofit organization whose mission supports the cause directly. This is Florida Pure Sea Salt’s most important initiative to date, and we are thrilled to have the community’s support.
Contact Info:
- Email: info@floridapureseasalt.com
- Website: https://www.floridapureseasalt.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/floridapureseasalt/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/floridapureseasalt/
Image Credits
Florida Pure Sea Salt
