Island’s Salt Bae Snaps Up Selfridges Deal

A business which started as a lockdown hobby has just levelled up from kitchen-table experiment to Oxford Street luxury.

Yes, light the beacons because the Isle of Man Salt Co. has officially landed in Selfridges. That’s right, THE Selfridges. The one with the yellow bags people on Instagram pose with like it’s the 2025 version of a knighthood.

The brains (and taste buds) behind the business is former chef turned entrepreneur and part-mermaid Helen Crosbie, who hand-harvests sea salt from the island’s waters like some kind of glamorous marine wizard.

Her products – including original sea salt, Red Chilli Salt and Super Seasoning – are now proudly sitting on the shelves of one of the UK’s most famous department stores (probably somewhere between the wasabi flavoured caviar and a tin of tomatoes grown in a region of Italy that you can’t even pronounce).

Now, before we go any further, let’s deal with the obvious comparison: Helen is basically the Isle of Man’s very own Salt Bae. For those blissfully unaware, Salt Bae (real name Nusret Gökçe) is the Turkish chef-turned-meme who shot to fame on social in 2017 after dramatically sprinkling salt down his forearm like he was seasoning steak with the tears of his enemies. He went viral, became besties with footballers (well, they pretended to anyway), and now runs ridiculously expensive restaurants where gold-plated steaks cost more than your car (if you can still find one open that is).

Helen, thankfully, is a much more down-to-earth version. Instead of sprinkling salt from her elbow, she’s collecting pristine seawater, filtering it, and letting the sun and wind do the hard work until perfect flakes appear. A bit of Manx alchemy, really. And she doesn’t even have to offer a sacrifice to the sea god Poseidon to do it (we hope).

‘Launching in Selfridges is a dream come true,’ said Helen. ‘We’re so proud of our roots, and to now be sharing our story and flavours with London feels like a real milestone.’

Translation: Londoners, prepare yourselves. Your chips will never taste the same again.

Enterprise Minister Tim Johnston MHK also chimed in, describing the launch as ‘a brilliant achievement for Helen and for the Isle of Man’ and an example of how ‘innovation, sustainability and quality can open doors to world-class retail’. Or, in less ministerial language: “We’ve got the best salt, and we’ll die on that hill.”

Helen, originally from Lancashire, moved to the island nine years ago when her husband Michael got a job here. On a walk across Perwick Bay, she spotted salt deposits on the rocks and had the lightbulb moment that would eventually lead to her sprinkling magic on London’s foodie scene. During lockdown she turned the hobby into a business, checking water purity with DEFA, and experimenting with different evaporation methods in polytunnels.

Now? She’s in Selfridges. Which means the Isle of Man officially exports not just motorbikes and musicians, but our salt too.

So the next time you reach for the salt at the dinner table, just remember that somewhere in London, people are paying posh-department-store prices for the same stuff you’ve been putting on your chips all along.