High 5 Salt Blends: Addictive seasoning leads to booming business
Despite her friends insisting her gourmet salt blend was so good it should be called “crack salt,” Laura Romito went with a slightly different name when she launched her line of specialty salts. The less controversially named Unboring Salt now leads the way in her collection called High 5 Salt Blends.
Romito’s company, Food Geek Foods, took shape after a fellow parent on her son’s baseball team, who worked for a local branding company, approached her about making her popular salt a “real” product. Romito, a Schoolcraft graduate and founder of Taste-full Tours, was initially hesitant but presented her ideas and was offered a deal as an equity investor.
“Within eight months we went from one crack salt to five professionally branded High 5 Blends,” Romito says. “It was a crazy-fast journey.”
Romito now sells her five varieties of vegan and gluten-free salt blends—Original Unboring, Power Lifter Bold Coarse, Tickled Pink Himalayan, Fixer Upper No Salt and Sweet Sass Sugar—online through her new website and Amazon, at Eastern Market and through over 30 other food suppliers around Michigan.
The “geek” in her company name comes from her love of the science behind the culinary arts, with her five styles designed to work with the five different tastes of the tongue.
“Everyone’s tongue tastes salt, sweet, tart, bitter and umami—which we call savory because many people don’t know that word and this product is complicated enough,” Romito says.
Romito explains that this same tantalizing of the senses is sometimes used by larger spice companies, but achieved through chemicals and additives. It’s something she wants to avoid.
“I use the science of taste and solid cooking techniques to do the same thing organically and naturally, with no chemicals, no anti-caking agents, just organic spices and wholesome ingredients,” she says.
And there are some surprising ingredients indeed. Romito’s Power Lifter has a hint of espresso powder and her Tickled Pink includes holistic herbs and spices like organic turmeric and cranberry powder. She is quick to point out that High 5 Salts are not “flavored blends,” they are designed to work in any dish by stimulating all of the taste buds.
“They don’t have aggressive flavors,” Romito says. “When I created the blends, I would make several batches and seal them for 24 hours. I would open each batch and smell it. If one specific herb or spice stood out, I’d go back to the formula and cut it back to make that spice more subtle.”
In an age when many consumers are watching their sodium intake, salt might not appeal to everyone but Romito offers an alternative with her no-sodium blend. It was, however, her most difficult blend to develop, and it took over 50 trials before she perfected the recipe.
While Romito sources most of her spices and fresh garlic from California, she also works with suppliers at Eastern Market for local ingredients as much as possible.
“Detroit currently produces beautiful fresh herbs, but few dried,” she says. “Our hope is that we can become a large enough consumer that we will be able to help stimulate the industry in Detroit to make the products that we need.”
With a new YouTube channel and dreams of wider distribution, it doesn’t look like Romito will be cutting off anyone’s “crack salt” addiction anytime soon.
