An artisanal salt maker creates a new product from an ancient source
As the frigid Atlantic sweeps over the tops of my Wellies again and again and soaks my feet, all I can do is laugh.
I’m collecting seawater with Danielle Hickson, owner of Asbury Park Sea Salt, who harvests it twice a week at low tide and has invited me along. The 20 gallons we collect will be slowly boiled down to make her lacy, fresh-tasting, local fleur de sel. On this frosty blue winter morning, I spot Hickson—far more appropriately dressed in fisherman’s waders—on the Asbury Park North Beach boardwalk, alongside a cart loaded with large plastic buckets. Despite the bitter cold, she is beaming, excited to get down to the water’s edge and continue what has become her life’s work.
Hickson decided in 2020 that she wanted to make a career shift from working full-time in higher-ed development to working in music. In 2021, she took the plunge. “Like a lot of musicians, I had a lot of odd jobs: I was a freelance songwriter, a freelance session vocalist, and I taught music at Lakehouse Music Academy in Asbury Park (still do).”
But it wasn’t sustainable for her. “I used to be really into crafts, doing things with my hands, and I missed that,” she says. “And I wanted to do something I could scale to give myself more financial freedom.” To think through major decisions Hickson, who lives in Tinton Falls, always heads to the As-bury Park beach. The choice to quit her development job and to pursue music was made there—and her connection to the ocean informed her next big decision: In November 2023, she decided to put her Rutgers University MBA in entrepreneur-ship and marketing to use and start a business selling a product. There was just one problem.
IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT THE SALT. IT’S ABOUT GOING TO THE OCEAN AND HAVING YOUR MOMENT AT THE BEACH.
“I couldn’t find an idea that I was jazzed about,” she says. “I knew I wanted to sell at a farmers’ market because I love them and it would be a low start-up cost.” But selling what? Then she had “a salt epiphany.”
“‘What about salt?’” she thought. “As soon as the idea popped into my head, I felt it in my body: ‘This is 100% it!’ I grabbed a water bottle, went to the beach, and attempted my first little batch of sea salt. I thought it would just taste like salt. But I thought, ‘This salt is good!’ I’d never had salt that tasted fresh. I was completely floored that it worked.”
This was in January 2024. Soon after, Hickson obtained a cottage food license and began testing her product. “A lot of salt makers try to find the best water source from an oyster farm or with a high salinity content,” she says. “And I’m, like, ‘I don’t need to search; it’s Asbury’s ocean.’ It’s not just about the salt,” she says, referring to the taste of her product. “It’s about going to the ocean and having your moment at the beach. It’s about what the Asbury Park ocean means to so many people, not just me. The music, the beach, the food—it’s all one. It really is a special place.”
The following April, she set up a vendor table and conducted market research at the Bell Works Asbury Fresh market in Holmdel. As curious passersby watched, she dipped bread into olive oil, sprinkled it with a bit of her salt (“a flake sea salt—very light and delicate, melt-in-your-mouth”) and invited them to taste. “I got great feedback,” she says. “I made back my money and then some.”
Boiling and filtering removes bacteria, algae, and sediment from Hickson’s product. “One minute of boiling kills over 99% of bacteria, and I boil for 15–16 hours,” she says. She also tests every batch for heavy metals since she learned that some fish can contain high levels of mercury, but she has never had a positive test. “If I do, I will discard it. I care a lot about food safety. I’m eating it; I’m pregnant; I give it to my nieces and nephews. I want to make sure my product is safe for everyone.”
The cottage food license requires Hickson to personally hand her salt to customers, either at a market or via personal delivery (which she offers to anyone within Monmouth County). She packages her salt by hand into jars featuring a logo designed by Anthony Galasso, a South Brunswick High School friend and fellow musician. “The sailboat that inspired the logo sits on top of Convention Hall,” she says. “I love seeing it every time I harvest!” Her target date to obtain a commercial license, which means using a commercial kitchen and allows holders to sell retail, is 2026.
After we’ve lugged our harvest up to the boardwalk, Hick-son runs back down to the beach to draw a gratitude symbol into the sand. It’s a ritual she never forgets to perform. “I feel so immensely grateful for the ocean,” she says. “I feel really blessed, coming home from a market, having cash in my hand and thinking, ‘The ocean gave this to me.’”
⯈ Listen to Danielle Hick’s newly released song “Seashells” here! distrokid.com/hyperfollow/daniellehickson/seashells
