DUXBURY, MASS. — Living in the East Coast hub of kelp farming, Kelsea Tower wanted to use the ocean crop to create a sustainable, better-for-you snack. Pixsea Puffs, which launched in November 2023, features kelp, hemp and sorghum in an extruded snack puff form.

The product reflects her family’s love for the ocean going back to her father, Richard Tower, who was a commercial fisherman. Kelsea Tower eventually became involved in the family business and grew up on her father’s boat as his “sea mate.”

“Being vegan, my dad a fisherman and my general health goals, I wanted to make a product that used things from the ocean and that was more sustainable for fisherman,” she said. “During COVID, I started talking with kelp farmers about ways I could benefit them and how we could drive demand for this incredible thing (kelp) coming from the ocean. Many of them said, ‘If you want to help this industry, come up with a product and create demand for it.’”

Knowing she wanted kelp as the product’s main ingredient, Tower looked at ways to innovate with it. She took to the kitchen, experimenting with kelp in a variety of applications, including baked foods, stir-fries and even homebrewed seaweed seltzers.

“My goal was to make seaweed, specifically sugar kelp, more palatable for the average consumer,” Tower said. “However, nothing felt right or tasted quite right, so I went back to the drawing board.”

She connected with a recipe developer specializing in extruded snacks to bring her ideas to life.

“Creating a puff snack not only allowed me to incorporate other sustainable crops, (sorghum and hemp) but also kept me out of the kitchen … which was probably for the best,” she said. “Extruded snacks was a way I could decrease the taste of the kelp but keep the mission of the product the same.”

The snack puffs came about by happenstance and her own thoughts during the R&D process, Tower said.

“With puff products, you can put healthy ingredients in the base and use the flavoring to appeal to anyone,” she said. “Pixsea is only one SKU (stock-keeping unit) right now, which is sea salt. But you can make a cheese flavor and tailor the end product. That’s why I went with an extruded puff.”

Mainstay snacks for Tower include chips and crackers, but as a health nut, she was not fond of the snacks she was eating. So she used her mainstay snacks as a driving force for creating Pixsea Puffs. The puffs have been a hit among health-conscious moms, millennials and Gen Z.

“I wanted to make a sustainable snack that allowed people to make a healthy choice easily,” she said. “People that are aware of health foods, they’re shopping in Whole Foods and are curious about better alternatives for themselves love the puffs.”

Looking ahead to future Pixsea Puffs innovations, Tower is aiming to “create a line of products that are simple alternatives to things that people are already buying but with higher-quality ingredients that do better by the environment.”

“I want to do two or three more SKUs of the puff and use that same formulation for a few other products,” she said.

Pixsea has now been on the market for a year. As a founder, Tower has experienced a crash course in entrepreneurship and has decided to “press pause with its co-manufacturer on Pixsea’s next round of production.”

This decision will help the company create more products and bring in additional team members, she said.

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