Meet Bill Creelman, founder of Spindrift, a company crafting beverages made with real squeezed fruit.
Raised amongst Western Massachusetts hippie farmers and the North Atlantic Ocean, Creelman developed a strong connection to his environment and the local food systems around him. As a leader in the beverage industry, Creelman is committed to using clean ingredients that promote human and environmental health while sharing the need for increased regenerative farming practices across the U.S.
Two memories come to mind. One of my jobs as a kid was to collect mint. I have such fond memories of running out to the garden, clipping the mint, and running back in. Mint is so overloaded with deliciousness, and maybe these memories relate to why I love our “Nojito” (lime and mint) flavor so much today.
The second memory that comes to mind is working on a fishing boat. We handled a lot of fish. It is one thing to see a fish in the water and another to hold one. That closeness really started a foundation of my love for being in the water and ocean. The North Atlantic Ocean is not always a friendly place, so my experiences definitely have given me an immense respect for nature.
I really was around the northeast, more specifically, Western Massachusetts. It was a really agricultural area and still is. I grew up in a farming environment. We got our heat mostly from our wood stove. I would get my milk from the cows close by and maple syrup from the farm up the street.
I was also on the islands off of Massachusetts where I was exposed to the ocean. I was very lucky. Massachusetts was an incredible place to grow up because I had contrasting worlds linked to fish, agriculture, and food.
This quote refers to the building of our company and the end product. There is a lot of patience and meaningful team building. Our raw materials rely on nature. It takes time to make a delicious grapefruit. We don’t take traditional corner cutting steps that certainly would be easier. We want to do it the right way and preserve nature in the way it was originally constructed.
Living on the islands off of Massachusetts, I was working in the fishing industry. I was a mate and one of my captains taught me the word spindrift. The literal meaning is wind blown in the surf. As the wave is breaking, if it is windy, it will shear the top of the wave off and create this tumbling mist. For some reason, at that moment, it was an emotionally charged word for me.
I remembered it years later when I was trying to think of a word to use for our fresh ingredient based sparkling beverage. It was the one that made the most sense. It has this strange connection to my early years yet is still connected to what I do now.
My mom used to take all of our excess food waste and throw it into our garden. Whether it was using all the harvested vegetables or not taking fish from the ocean unless they would be used entirely, nothing was let go to waste. This was just the way I was brought up, but I didn’t know of a term that applied to that behavior.
In the place I grew up, everyone was into sustainability – not because it was trendy, but because it was essential to survive and was ingrained in the culture. You know, you were intuitively aware when you grew up and worked around food. This idea, rooted in respect, really attracted me to the Regenerative Movement. Now there is a word for doing things with nature in the right way and mindfully.
“My mom used to take all of our excess food waste and throw it into our garden. Whether it was using all the harvested vegetables or not taking fish from the ocean unless they would be used entirely, nothing was let go to waste. This was just the way I was brought up, but I didn’t know of a term that applied to that behavior.”
Essentially, club soda, seltzer water, and sparkling water are all the same. The reason they are given these different names is because of their use and origin. Sparkling water is a very generic word that was born out of looking for a de facto descriptor. We called our first product seltzer. As it turned out, it was a bad idea because most of the U.S. did not know what we were talking about.
Soda is in this other world. It is mostly commonly thought of as the sweeter product and often with a negative connotation. There isn’t really a common definition, so we have had some fun playing around with language over the years.
The American approach to our food and diet is unfortunately doing things faster and cheaper. When we entered the flavored sparkling water category, natural flavor could be anything and often wasn’t real fruit. Our goal in the beverage industry is to challenge and unwind that mindset by reintroducing real ingredients.
We are using the actual fruit that is on the front of the package. We go out to the orange growers or cranberry or whatever fruit and actually work with them to create a product, doing as little to the fruit as possible.
It would have to be the success of our original blackberry product. Blackberries are a really difficult product to work with, primarily because they have a lot of pulp. After failing numerous times, we were finally able to make the product successfully.
I remember opening the package with my wife and some friends who came over. It was a completely transformative experience finally getting it manufactured and being able to enjoy it in that moment. We also got a wave of appreciation for the product from the public. So much gratification came from that experience since it was a big challenge that was hard fought and overcome.
It is an exciting time for the industry.
I think soda will evolve much like other industries have: we’ll still have the old products we grew up with, but there will also be a new class of beverages made with cleaner, more thoughtful ingredients.
Soda is an enormous category, so it will take time. I think regulations will play a role to some degree. To me, the real driving force will be the consumer who is becoming more informed and is fed up and expecting more from their beverages.
I think I would be doing something on the other end of agriculture. I am really interested in the farming side of it. We get to work with all these incredible ingredients and amazing farmers. For me, the farming world is super interesting because of the role between farmers and climate. How can we bring more attention to these two areas?
Tom Petty is playing on the radio. I am still stuck in that age of music. The people I am most interested in having a dinner party with are the people that have taken on great challenges and have overcome them.
I think about Yvon Chouinard – I greatly admire him. I think about Julia Child, her obsession with food and ingredients and being a woman in a predominately male world. I think about Abraham Lincoln because I’m not sure if there was a person who had more hardship and challenges in their life.
It would be quite a strange but wildly entertaining dinner party.
Yvon Chouinard
Julia Child
Abraham Lincoln
Written by: Luli Harrison
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