A New Gastronomic Experience with RivSalt

Picture this... natural Himalayan rock salt freshly grated straight onto your dish with a miniature stainless steel grater of the highest quality. Pop it back on the accompanying oak stand and create a beautiful design piece for your table setting.

This is not just a way adding flavour to your food, it's a full gastronomic experience.

Let us introduce you to Rivsalt - a brand with original thought, surprising creativity, and ingenious invention - and the man behind the idea - Swedish entrepreneur and designer Jens Sandringer.

The idea of Rivsalt was inspired by a trip to Japan, can you tell us about the evolution of this product from an idea to what it is today?

Inspiration came from a 3 month "working long stay" in Beijing 2008. My favourite teppanyaki restaurant was grating rock salt over our food using a large Japanese ginger grater. I thought it was a cool experience and wanted to buy a product to have on my dining table. The product did not exist, so I casually started to design it.

Four years later I was on parental leave with my first child. Product design was ready and I now finally had time to bring it to life. The material was sourced and 2000pcs was purchased during autumn 2012, 900pcs was sold to Designtorget for Christmas 2012 and the first half of 2013, and the rest (1100pcs) was sold to our Swedish distributor Magasin and Friends of Brands during first half 2013. Re-orders have been made and distributors have been added since.

The two original products Rivsalt and Rivsalt Refill have been accompanied by an additional 10 products and the portfolio continues to grow!

It definitely makes for a beautiful table centrepiece with its unique design – how did the design come to life?

A large number of prototypes were made, first in cardboard then in wood and metal. Initial design thoughts were all about creating a dining table centrepiece. Consequently, size and product simplicity were the two most important elements in the process. Beautiful, so that it would stay put on the dining table as a design object (not be removed between uses), and simple enough so that folks immediately would understand, talk about it and finally enjoy testing the gastronomic experience.

In the second stage, all focus was on the packaging design to make it stand out in retail. Simplicity and clear product communication were my main goals.

Rivsalt has been described as a gastronomic experience and a new way of adding salt to food – can you explain a bit more about how the process of grating the salt adds to an experience of a dish?

Rivsalt is all about design, communication, and experience. To grate your own salt adds to the dining experience and the beautiful design adds to the dining table set up.

This makes the product a great communication piece and the dining experience more fun. Salt is added to the dish in the process, and the different types of rock salt go with different dishes, which makes it a really interesting product for foodies.

You now stock a wide range of different kinds of salt (and even a raw liquorice product) from all over the world that all have unique flavours – can you tell us a bit of history about the different kinds of salt and how they came to be a part of the Rivsalt family?

Grateable salt equals Rock salt.

The most commonly known type of rock salt is the pinkish coloured Himalayan rock salt (this type of salt is over 150-200 million years old!). This was the salt that we used in our initial products; RIVSALT, RIVSALT REFILL and RIVSALT KITCHEN. Other, less common types of rock salts are also found in different locations all around the world! Once we established our Rivsalt products, we of course also wanted to make use of these more unusual rocks and consequently, we created products BLUE, TASTE and TASTE Jr.

Using our Rivsalt product platform it is also very interesting to explore other grateable spices that could add to our customer's gastronomic experience. This is where raw LIQUORICE comes into the product mix. In this category, you will also find out new PEPPER product.

You also run inspirational seminars through passmethesaltplease...

Many approach me with questions about Rivsalt specifically, but also express interest regarding the actual start-up journey, including the dos and don’ts. I believe our story has relevance for many within the creative community, be it product development, design strategy or organisational re-structuring to become more innovative.

More info here: https://passmethesaltplease.com/

What can we expect to see next from Rivsalt?

Pepper and Toothpick.

RIVSALT PEPPER -
Rivsalt Pepper consists of an Oak stand, Stainless steel grater and a bag of Long pepper from Java that can be grated.

RIVSALT TOOTHPICK -
Rivsalt Toothpick consists of an Oak stand and a Moroccan toothpick flower used to clean teeth.

Rivsalt makes the perfect gift for any foodie! If you are interested in experiencing this beautiful product, you can find it in our Pasta Perfecto Tube via the link below!