Portland salt company highlighted in Super Bowl ad

Published 9:23 am Friday, February 7, 2025

By Dana Haynes

Jacobsen Salt Co., an Oregon company favored by cooks everywhere, will be featured in an ad during the Super Bowl.

It’s quite a distance from Oregon’s Netarts Bay to New Orleans.

But sharp-eyed local fans of the 2025 Super Bowl likely will catch an Oregon company’s ad during the big game on Sunday.

Jacobsen Salt Co., a favorite of cooks everywhere, has a headquarters in Portland’s Kerns Neighborhood and will be featured in an ad during one of the most-watched sporting events in the world.

The ad will be part of Google’s “50 Stories, 50 States” campaign and will be seen only in Oregon. The campaign highlights how artificial intelligence is transforming small businesses like Jacobsen’s.

The salt company was founded in 2011 by Ben Jacobsen in Netarts Bay, just south of Tillamook.

“Not all saltwater is the same,” according to the company’s website. Jacobsen tested 27 sites all along the Oregon and Washington coasts before landing in Netarts Bay, chosen specifically because of its bright salinity, thanks in part to the number of oysters in the bay that act as a natural filter.

The company maintains a salt production facility at Netarts Bay, as well as its office in Portland.

The company is known primarily for flake, kosher and fine salts but also has branched out into sustainable beekeeping and honey production, candies and other seasonings.

According to the website, seawater is pumped, filtered and transferred via reverse osmosis, a water filtration process that uses a semi-permeable membrane to remove contaminants from water. The salt is further filtered and reduced to a concentrated saltwater, which is called prebrine.

The prebrine is pumped into large, boiling tanks where excess minerals are removed and the prebrine continues to reduce down to brine.

The company maintains a gift shop at 9820 Whiskey Creek Road in Tillamook, open seven days per week.

Jacobsen Salt Co. proudly advertises “pure sea salt” on its iconic mint green tins. But as famed physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson once famously quipped: On Earth, all salt is sea salt.

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