The Atlantic Ocean finds a seat at the table  

Hope & Main acquires more space for wild ideas — the art and science of making sea salt is just the beginning

By Michelle Mercure   
Posted 1/23/25

A series of scratchy “tap, tap, tap” sounds made on a chalkboard as a teacher illustrates the pi formula using a white piece of chalk is probably — most likely — a thing of …

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The Atlantic Ocean finds a seat at the table  

Hope & Main acquires more space for wild ideas — the art and science of making sea salt is just the beginning

Posted

A series of scratchy “tap, tap, tap” sounds made on a chalkboard as a teacher illustrates the pi formula using a white piece of chalk is probably — most likely — a thing of the past. The chalkboard has been replaced by the whiteboard, and the whiteboard has since been replaced by a SMARTboard. However, in the old school building now known as Hope & Main, the same chalkboards that once served as teaching tools still exist — the learning space recreated into kitchens, and the students now entrepreneurs. 

Commercial spaces are available for people interested in starting a local food business — no idea is too bold. Eight years ago, Matthew Mullins came to Hope & Main with a “wild” idea to create table salt made from water he collected from the Atlantic Ocean. 

Specifically, and seriously, he came in and asked, “Is this a crazy idea? I want to get water from the ocean and make salt.” 

The planning for this type of business was a bit perplexing, as no one knew quite how to classify it, as no one else in the state was doing it. The water collected for the process has no restrictions, so things seemed wide open in terms of usage. The need, however, was for a commercial kitchen where the water could be safely and properly reduced to salt flakes. Enter Hope & Main — the old schoolhouse. 

Mullins got to work refining his process in one of Hope & Main’s kitchens eight years ago, but the staff is still fascinated by it today. Alison Mountford, director of marketing and communications at Hope & Main, captivated by the salt-making process, remarked, “Even though I know where salt comes from, I don’t look at the ocean and immediately make that connection.” 

Check out the steps of the salt making process.

She said this as she stared in amazement at the flakes being moved into colanders to dry out. “I never saw this part,” she added, with excitement in her voice, as she took out her camera to snap a photo of the process. According to Mullins, “The process is like a mixture of art and science.” 

A retired Navy veteran, Mullins got the idea while overseas, tasting locally made olive oil in Italy. Upon returning to the U.S. and settling in Newport, he wondered why Aquidneck Island — literally surrounded by seawater — was importing all its sea salt. He compared it to seafood, asking, “Imagine importing all the quahogs and shellfish into Rhode Island when we have this great resource called the Atlantic Ocean?”

He went on to ask, “I figured we are the ocean state, we should have a sea salt, right?”  

Eight years later, his company, Newport Sea Salt, which he runs with his wife, Tami Mullins, just opened its first brick-and-mortar storefront on Thames Street in Newport, selling their unique product — sea salt. Once a week you will find him hauling 27 five-gallon buckets of sea water that he has collected from the ocean to one of the kitchens at Hope & Main  — to create his sea salt.

Mullins is just one of many success stories that have come out of Hope & Main’s kitchen spaces. Hope & Main has five kitchens at its location in Warren, but plans are underway to expand. Blueprints are already drawn up, and a building has been secured. Once the planning stages are finalized, the hope of the staff is that in the year 2025, the doors to their new building will open, providing three more kitchens for other “wild” ideas like sea salt to inhabit their space.

2025 by East Bay Media Group

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Meet our staff
Jim McGaw

A lifelong Portsmouth resident, Jim graduated from Portsmouth High School in 1982 and earned a journalism degree from the University of Rhode Island in 1986. He's worked two different stints at East Bay Newspapers, for a total of 18 years with the company so far. When not running all over town bringing you the news from Portsmouth, Jim listens to lots and lots and lots of music, watches obscure silent films from the '20s and usually has three books going at once. He also loves to cook crazy New Orleans dishes for his wife of 25 years, Michelle, and their two sons, Jake and Max.