The Wave That Started It All
About Surf Salt — Portland, Oregon
There's a break off the coast of Tavarua, a tiny heart-shaped island in Fiji, called Cloudbreak. It's one of the most powerful left-hand reef breaks on the planet — a wave that surfers spend years working up to, and a few seconds riding before it swallows them whole.
I paddled out there not knowing if I'd make it back in. I did. Barely.
What I remember most isn't the wave itself. It's what came after — sitting in the channel, completely spent, salt-crusted and dehydrated, watching the ocean that had just worked me over and thinking: I love this place. And I want to protect it.
That trip to Cloudbreak is where Surf Salt was born.
Why We Exist
I'm a physician. I've spent my career thinking carefully about how the body works — how it absorbs things, what it actually needs, and what the evidence says versus what the marketing says.
When I looked at the electrolyte category, I saw a lot of marketing.
Brands leading with huge sodium numbers. Brands with no sugar, ignoring decades of gut absorption science. Brands with two minerals calling themselves "complete." Brands charging $2.50 a serving for something that cost pennies to make.
And not a single one — not one — that included Vitamin B12.
I decided to build the brand I wanted to buy.
What Makes Surf Salt Different
Most electrolyte brands give you sodium and call it hydration. We give you the full picture.
A truly complete electrolyte profile. Sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium — the four minerals your body actually loses when you sweat. Most brands skip calcium entirely. We don't cut corners on the formula.
Active B12, in every scoop. We include 25 mcg of methylcobalamin — the bioactive form of B12 — in every serving. B12 deficiency is one of the most common and under-recognized nutritional gaps, particularly in active adults. No other brand in our category includes it. We think that's worth fixing.
Smart sugar, not junk sugar. The 5 grams of sugar in every serving isn't there to make it taste sweet. It's there because of the sodium-glucose co-transporter (SGLT1) — a mechanism in your gut lining that uses glucose to actively pull sodium and water into your bloodstream. Without it, you're leaving absorption efficiency on the table. We include it because the science says to.
Roughly a dollar a serving. Science-backed doesn't have to mean premium-priced. At $29.99 for 30 servings, Surf Salt undercuts almost every comparable product in the category. We made that choice deliberately. Good hydration should be accessible.
The Jar Is Part of the Mission
We use glass jars. Not because they look good on a shelf (though they do). Because single-use plastic has no place in a brand built around ocean conservation.
Every Surf Salt jar is designed to be refilled, repurposed, or returned. The container isn't packaging — it's part of the product. When you're done with it, it goes back into the world as something useful, not into a landfill.
And with every sale, a share of revenue goes directly to marine conservation. We're building the giving structure into the business from day one — not as a marketing add-on, but as a founding commitment.
The ocean gives surfers, swimmers, and athletes the thing they love most. We think it deserves something back.
Built in Portland. Made for Wherever the Water Takes You.
Surf Salt is a Portland, Oregon brand. We're small, intentional, and just getting started.
We launched with one product — Surf Salt Balanced, our everyday hydration formula — because we'd rather do one thing exceptionally well than spread thin across a catalog. More formulas are coming. But this is the one we built first, the one we use ourselves, and the one that carries everything we believe about hydration and stewardship.
If you've ever loved a body of water enough to want to protect it — you're who we made this for.
— Dr. Adrian Cois MD, Founder, Surf Salt
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.