Nº01
The first trip
Two founders, one carry-on each, and a shared obsession we couldn't quite explain to anyone at dinner. We booked the flight. Destination: Porto.
How two girls fell for a little silver fish.
It started with broth. It became a love affair with sardines.
Two coasts, six factories, one very full drawer.
We are Vidhie and Nati. One flight to Porto turned into a tour of tinned fish canneries across Portugal and Galicia, and somewhere along the way we became the curators and connoisseurs of the conservas world.
Two founders, one carry-on each, and a shared obsession we couldn't quite explain to anyone at dinner. We booked the flight. Destination: Porto.
Our first ever business trip together, and we went all in. From Porto down into Galicia in Spain, two friends taking themselves just a little bit seriously for the very first time, and completely sure that something was beginning.
We toured more than six tinned fish factories across Portugal and Spain. Names like Ramirez in Porto, going all the way back to the 1800s, Minerva since 1983, and Nuri, the cult Porto sardine. Enormous places, some with robots on the line, supplying supermarkets, premium labels and their own coveted brands. We were completely hooked.
We met the people who run this world. The ones who have worked with these canneries for years and know exactly how it is caught, cured and tinned, right down to the season a fish is at its very best.
Then we tasted. And tasted. More than 100 different tins, for breakfast, for dinner, on the beach, and far too often straight from the can with our fingers. Someone had to do the research so you do not have to. Sardines, tuna, mussels: if it comes in a tin, we have very strong opinions.
Back home it all landed in one drawer. A whole drawer of tins, sorted, stacked and slightly out of control. Our friends thought we had lost it. We had actually just found it.
We posted our sardine drawer and the internet lost it. Sixty thousand followers in three months and still climbing, tins arriving at our door, and a flood of messages from people asking us to curate the good stuff for them.
So now we do exactly that. The best tinned fish the coast has to offer, sardines, tuna and mussels, hand picked by us and sealed with ten kisses. For you.
We didn't start a fish company. We started a feeling.
Somewhere between a Porto rooftop and a very full drawer, we realised the thing we loved wasn't just the sardines. It was the ritual. The tin cracked open at golden hour. The bread, the good olive oil, the people who linger. We started The Salty Club to bottle that feeling and hand it to you, one beautiful tin at a time.
We hunt down conservas worth obsessing over and treat them like the treasure they are. No sad pantry afterthoughts here.
A tin, a terrace, good company. We're building a brand around slowing down and savouring, the Mediterranean way.
The Salty Club is a community of people who just get it. You're not a customer, you're a keeper.