August 12, 2023 • 12 mins
Long-time residents of the South Coast of Massachusetts, especially New Bedford, grew up with Silmo syrup in their milkshakes, frappes and other treats. Decades ago, the business closed down, but New Bedford City Councilor Ian Abreu is bringing it back to life, while keeping it all in the family. He talks with Nichole on this week's show about how he's re-introducing his grandfather's recipes to a new generation, and what's coming down the pipeline from Silmo.
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(00:07):
From WBZ News Radio in Boston.This is New England Weekend where each and
every week we come together and talkabout all the topics important to you and
the place where you live. Greatto be back with you again this week.
I'm Nicole Davis. All right,so here's a question for you.
Have you ever had coffee milk?Maybe you're not from the South Coast or
Rhode Island, really southeastern mass andyou might be wondering coffee milk. What
(00:30):
is that? Well, it's reallygood stuff, is what it is.
But think of essentially chocolate milk.When you get the chocolate syrup and you
put it in the cup, youadd the milk, you stir it up,
you've got chocolate milk. Same withstrawberry and same with coffee syrup.
For decades, Silamos Syrup was wellknown on the South Coast, especially in
New Bedford, for their own versionof coffee syrup and other flavors too,
(00:52):
but really the coffee was the bigstuff. The company closed down in two
thousand and one and now in twentytwenty three, enter Ian Abrew. His
grandfather owned Silmo for many years,and he is now deciding to forge ahead
and bring the iconic brand back forall of us to love, while updating
it too for the twenty first century. Ian's here on the show with us
now, and Ian great to haveyou here. Let's start with a deeper
(01:15):
history, because I want to knowmore about this story that led you a
city councilor in New Bedford to whereyou are now with this business with Silmo.
Silmo Syrup was founded in nineteen thirtytwo by two gentlemen from the Great
Bedford area with the last names ofSylvia and Moray's or as you say in
Portuguese more Ash and that's where youcrammed the two names together. It's an
(01:38):
acronym into sil Mo. My grandfather, Manuel Martin had bought the company from
them in the early nineteen seventies nineteenseventy two to be exact, and kept
it in the family all the wayup until two thousand and one. It
was in our family in some way, shape or form. Unfortunately, when
(02:00):
the business had changed ownership, thebusiness had ceased to exist. And that's
why some twenty one years later,I'm happy to have brought it back.
But Silamost Syrup is a flavoring companythat offers syrup flavorings and sauces and jams
and all kinds of good stuff we'vehad all throughout our history, sodas and
(02:20):
all kinds of amazing flavorings. Ourmain stay flavor has been and always will
be coffee syrup for coffee milk andcoffee flavored drinks. And for those who
don't live in southeastern New England,New Bedford, Rhode Island, in that
area, in the south coast area, I always say to folks, think
of your coffee milk or your strawberrymilk with when you put other like Hersheys
(02:46):
or other syrups or powders in there, think of that. But in terms
of coffee, the same kind ofconsistency, just a coffee flavor, and
then then people try to understand andthen they can kind of get it.
But it's a big Portuguese Looso AmericanCape Verdan thing here in southeastern mass and
in Rhode Island, and we're lookingto not only continuing to bring that to
(03:07):
light where it's always been popular,but expose it to other regions throughout New
England and the country. Yeah,so tell me, I noticed that your
syrup is a little bit different fromother syrups because it doesn't have high fructose
corn syrup in it, which isin pretty much, shit seems, every
product out there these days. Whydid you make that choice. We're very
(03:28):
proud of that, and that goesback to the original formula for which that
was instituted, and then my grandfatherhad carried on and now I'm carrying on.
Reality is that you do not needhigh fructose corn syrup to have a
great coffee syrup product. We don'tput that in there. We feel as
though, not only is high fructosecorn syrup not too great for you,
(03:51):
but we feel as though the syrupymolasses like consistency and the sweetener of it,
it masks the true coffee flavor ofour product. Well, we use
we use pure one hundred percent coffeebean extract, which is a straight brew
of one hundred percent coffee beans andpure cane sugar, and we have other
things in there as well. We'vegot some preservatives in there to keep it
(04:14):
shell stable, and we've got somethickening agents in there, and of course
water. But that's pretty much it. You look at our ingredients list on
our label or on our website,it's pretty simple and for me, there
are two non negotiables. When Silmoand whatever flavor we're doing, he never
to have high fluctuos corn syrups inany of our bottles. And two,
(04:34):
while speaking about bottles, bottles toalways remain glass and its original truest form
bottles. We're always glass, goingback to nineteen thirty two, and we're
going to keep that tradition going herein twenty twenty three. Yeah, clearly
you care very much about history,about family, about tradition. What was
it like trying to bring back thissyrup, this product that had been off
(04:58):
the shelves for so long it's stwas not for the faint of heart,
I'll tell you that. Trying toget back onto all the grocery store shelves
and negotiating things like slotting seas andI've learned a whole new bunch of acronyms
and saying in the grocery store business. And it's not that's not my background.
The background was never a grocery SoI was around when I was a
(05:21):
small kid, when my father wasrunning production and my grandfather had but I
wasn't obviously intimately involved in the dayto day operations. But it's been great.
The response has been fantastic for thecommunity and the stores that were in
where we're blessed. If you goto our website smile at silml dot com,
you'll see that we're in all thebig stores. I mean, we're
(05:42):
in the market baskets, the shaws, the stopping shops, and many others.
And we're we're proud to be inabout one hundred local area grocers or
retailers and shops right now, andwe want to continue to add to that
and expand because we have the capacityto do so, and more importantly,
we have the motivation to do so. And we've got a good team in
place. I'm very proud of theteam that we do have. And then
(06:06):
we're going to continue to grow thisand hopefully this is just a sign of
new things to come, and weare going to continue to bring back other
flavors as well as the months andyears go on. We've already brought back
and got online our strawberry syrup flavor, which has been met with high praise.
Same thing but that we use purestrawberry extract, so no powders,
(06:30):
nothing like that. That product isgmo free, gluten friendly, so that's
always a great thing. But weused to have chocolate syrup, vanilla syrup,
another flavors. Our plans that arebring all of them back eventually,
and we're working on that all right. The big question here, what is
your favorite way to use your syrup, like your favorite beverage ice cream?
(06:51):
What do you like to do it? Do it well? You can't be
a coffee frap or as some peoplecall it, a milkshake. You get
a couple of scoops of coffee icecream, or the way I like it.
If you want it in its truestsilmo form, you put the coffee
syrup in with vanilla ice cream,because vanilla is the base of all ice
(07:11):
cream as we know se you puta couple of scoops of vanilla ice cream.
You put the straight up silmo syrupin there. Some whole milk.
It's got to be whole milk ifyou can, and from a dietary perspective,
if you can have whole milk,I recommend you put whole milk in
the frap, not scam or anythingelse, because you want to have true
flavor. Hey, listen, ifyou're gonna go, you know you gotta
go big. You gotta go home. I mean, you gotta go all
(07:32):
the way. But of course Ilike it in milk and all of that.
But for all the adults drinkers outthere, it makes a fantastic espresso
martini by the way, just throwingthat out there, and uh, and
it's great in khalula and ramshata bail. These people have to put it in
their pancakes and their waffles, likein the batter mix in their brownies.
There's been a lot of people havebeen submitting recipes to me over the months.
(07:56):
It's been pretty pretty fantastic. Yeah, I was gonna say the community
response once you mentioned that a lotof people are picking it up, putting
it in stores, but especially peoplewho've been around the South Coast for a
long time. I mean, tellus about the response and what you're hearing
from people. It's been overwhelmingly positive, and especially our stores here in Greater
New Bedford were constantly restocking. Wecan't keep it on the shelves. The
(08:18):
community has certainly picked me and usup in our resturgence. People here in
New Bedford and on the South Coast, they really take a liking to small
businesses and those who who set upshop on the proverbial main street, right,
and they understand that small businesses herein Bedford make up the economic lifeblood
(08:41):
of what we all love and callhome. So with that being said,
the response has been unbelievable and Ican't think the people of not just New
Bedford, but the south coast,the south Shore Rhode Island. I can't
think them enough of their response sofar. And we're still well two people
were in the infancy stage of ourreascension. Yes, we're in the stores
(09:03):
and we're doing pretty well, butwe want to bring on more flavors.
We want to bring on additional locations, and we want to continue to grow
this and not just here in NewEngland. I mean there are spots all
over North America and throughout the worldwhere coffee syrup and coffee milk, other
flavorings for milk and other drinks areextremely popular, and we're going to try
(09:24):
to tap into those markets. Yeah, and then I guess my last question
is about you and your family beingsuch a family centric product for you,
What does your family have to sayabout this work and how do you feel
about watching Silmost Syrup essentially make acomeback like it has. Well. First
of all, before I could evengo forward with this, I have to
(09:46):
ask my wife if it were okay, because I gave up I gave up
a darn near close six figure asalary job to do this. And I
was a director of Business for theChamber of Commerce here in New Bedford in
the South Coast for over ten years, so of course I had to have
buying from home for my wife.And she said, look, you've been
talking about this for a while.If this is where your heart sat,
(10:07):
I know your grind, I knowyou're a work ethics so if you're going
to do it, both for it, and that's kind of what I've been
doing since March when I had relinquishedmy post at the Chamber. But the
family response has been fantastic. Myfather's been helping me out and the production
aspect. My father was the onewho made the syrups. I mean my
(10:28):
father somebody of the day. Itwas pretty crazy, said every batch of
any kind of silmos syrup from nineteeneighty three on he made. And he's
had his hands literally and so letthat sink in. That's pretty that's pretty
crazy. And so my father hasbeen helping me out of the law and
my mother, of course it washer father, my grandfather who owned the
(10:50):
company, so she has been rootingfor me as well and helping out when
appropriate behind the scenes. And thefamily support has been there because without support
a family, I can do whatI'm doing absolutely Okay, So let's get
to how people can find you.You've got a website, social media,
phone number. How can people geta hold of you? Sure, you
(11:13):
can find us on the web atsmile with Silmo dot com. You can
find us on Instagram. Our handleis at Silmo Syrup Altogether. On Facebook,
it's Silmo Packaging Co. Inc.Pyphen Silmo Syrup again, it's spelled
Si Lmo. And you can alwayscall our office at five zero eight four
(11:37):
nine six four three three five andwe're always open. You know, it
doesn't matter what kind of market agrocery store you have, no matter how
big or small you are. Ifyou think there's a need see a customer
base to grow, it's uh Syrupflavoring offerings. I would love to have
a conversation with you and talk abouthow we can perhaps be added into here
(11:58):
in the Tory right. Fantastic ianthis has been a great conversation. I
love when South Coast businesses thrive,so thank you again for the time and
all the best with the Sarah resurgence. You bet you, thank you very
much. I have a safe andhealthy weekend, and please join me again
next week for another edition of theshow. I'm Nicole Davis from WBZ News
(12:20):
Radio on iHeartRadio.
From WBZ News Radio in Boston.This is New England Weekend where each and
every week we come together and talkabout all the topics important to you and
the place where you live. Greatto be back with you again this week.
I'm Nicole Davis. All right,so here's a question for you.
Have you ever had coffee milk?Maybe you're not from the South Coast or
Rhode Island, really southeastern mass andyou might be wondering coffee milk. What
(00:30):
is that? Well, it's reallygood stuff, is what it is.
But think of essentially chocolate milk.When you get the chocolate syrup and you
put it in the cup, youadd the milk, you stir it up,
you've got chocolate milk. Same withstrawberry and same with coffee syrup.
For decades, Silamos Syrup was wellknown on the South Coast, especially in
New Bedford, for their own versionof coffee syrup and other flavors too,
(00:52):
but really the coffee was the bigstuff. The company closed down in two
thousand and one and now in twentytwenty three, enter Ian Abrew. His
grandfather owned Silmo for many years,and he is now deciding to forge ahead
and bring the iconic brand back forall of us to love, while updating
it too for the twenty first century. Ian's here on the show with us
now, and Ian great to haveyou here. Let's start with a deeper
(01:15):
history, because I want to knowmore about this story that led you a
city councilor in New Bedford to whereyou are now with this business with Silmo.
Silmo Syrup was founded in nineteen thirtytwo by two gentlemen from the Great
Bedford area with the last names ofSylvia and Moray's or as you say in
Portuguese more Ash and that's where youcrammed the two names together. It's an
(01:38):
acronym into sil Mo. My grandfather, Manuel Martin had bought the company from
them in the early nineteen seventies nineteenseventy two to be exact, and kept
it in the family all the wayup until two thousand and one. It
was in our family in some way, shape or form. Unfortunately, when
(02:00):
the business had changed ownership, thebusiness had ceased to exist. And that's
why some twenty one years later,I'm happy to have brought it back.
But Silamost Syrup is a flavoring companythat offers syrup flavorings and sauces and jams
and all kinds of good stuff we'vehad all throughout our history, sodas and
(02:20):
all kinds of amazing flavorings. Ourmain stay flavor has been and always will
be coffee syrup for coffee milk andcoffee flavored drinks. And for those who
don't live in southeastern New England,New Bedford, Rhode Island, in that
area, in the south coast area, I always say to folks, think
of your coffee milk or your strawberrymilk with when you put other like Hersheys
(02:46):
or other syrups or powders in there, think of that. But in terms
of coffee, the same kind ofconsistency, just a coffee flavor, and
then then people try to understand andthen they can kind of get it.
But it's a big Portuguese Looso AmericanCape Verdan thing here in southeastern mass and
in Rhode Island, and we're lookingto not only continuing to bring that to
(03:07):
light where it's always been popular,but expose it to other regions throughout New
England and the country. Yeah,so tell me, I noticed that your
syrup is a little bit different fromother syrups because it doesn't have high fructose
corn syrup in it, which isin pretty much, shit seems, every
product out there these days. Whydid you make that choice. We're very
(03:28):
proud of that, and that goesback to the original formula for which that
was instituted, and then my grandfatherhad carried on and now I'm carrying on.
Reality is that you do not needhigh fructose corn syrup to have a
great coffee syrup product. We don'tput that in there. We feel as
though, not only is high fructosecorn syrup not too great for you,
(03:51):
but we feel as though the syrupymolasses like consistency and the sweetener of it,
it masks the true coffee flavor ofour product. Well, we use
we use pure one hundred percent coffeebean extract, which is a straight brew
of one hundred percent coffee beans andpure cane sugar, and we have other
things in there as well. We'vegot some preservatives in there to keep it
(04:14):
shell stable, and we've got somethickening agents in there, and of course
water. But that's pretty much it. You look at our ingredients list on
our label or on our website,it's pretty simple and for me, there
are two non negotiables. When Silmoand whatever flavor we're doing, he never
to have high fluctuos corn syrups inany of our bottles. And two,
(04:34):
while speaking about bottles, bottles toalways remain glass and its original truest form
bottles. We're always glass, goingback to nineteen thirty two, and we're
going to keep that tradition going herein twenty twenty three. Yeah, clearly
you care very much about history,about family, about tradition. What was
it like trying to bring back thissyrup, this product that had been off
(04:58):
the shelves for so long it's stwas not for the faint of heart,
I'll tell you that. Trying toget back onto all the grocery store shelves
and negotiating things like slotting seas andI've learned a whole new bunch of acronyms
and saying in the grocery store business. And it's not that's not my background.
The background was never a grocery SoI was around when I was a
(05:21):
small kid, when my father wasrunning production and my grandfather had but I
wasn't obviously intimately involved in the dayto day operations. But it's been great.
The response has been fantastic for thecommunity and the stores that were in
where we're blessed. If you goto our website smile at silml dot com,
you'll see that we're in all thebig stores. I mean, we're
(05:42):
in the market baskets, the shaws, the stopping shops, and many others.
And we're we're proud to be inabout one hundred local area grocers or
retailers and shops right now, andwe want to continue to add to that
and expand because we have the capacityto do so, and more importantly,
we have the motivation to do so. And we've got a good team in
place. I'm very proud of theteam that we do have. And then
(06:06):
we're going to continue to grow thisand hopefully this is just a sign of
new things to come, and weare going to continue to bring back other
flavors as well as the months andyears go on. We've already brought back
and got online our strawberry syrup flavor, which has been met with high praise.
Same thing but that we use purestrawberry extract, so no powders,
(06:30):
nothing like that. That product isgmo free, gluten friendly, so that's
always a great thing. But weused to have chocolate syrup, vanilla syrup,
another flavors. Our plans that arebring all of them back eventually,
and we're working on that all right. The big question here, what is
your favorite way to use your syrup, like your favorite beverage ice cream?
(06:51):
What do you like to do it? Do it well? You can't be
a coffee frap or as some peoplecall it, a milkshake. You get
a couple of scoops of coffee icecream, or the way I like it.
If you want it in its truestsilmo form, you put the coffee
syrup in with vanilla ice cream,because vanilla is the base of all ice
(07:11):
cream as we know se you puta couple of scoops of vanilla ice cream.
You put the straight up silmo syrupin there. Some whole milk.
It's got to be whole milk ifyou can, and from a dietary perspective,
if you can have whole milk,I recommend you put whole milk in
the frap, not scam or anythingelse, because you want to have true
flavor. Hey, listen, ifyou're gonna go, you know you gotta
go big. You gotta go home. I mean, you gotta go all
(07:32):
the way. But of course Ilike it in milk and all of that.
But for all the adults drinkers outthere, it makes a fantastic espresso
martini by the way, just throwingthat out there, and uh, and
it's great in khalula and ramshata bail. These people have to put it in
their pancakes and their waffles, likein the batter mix in their brownies.
There's been a lot of people havebeen submitting recipes to me over the months.
(07:56):
It's been pretty pretty fantastic. Yeah, I was gonna say the community
response once you mentioned that a lotof people are picking it up, putting
it in stores, but especially peoplewho've been around the South Coast for a
long time. I mean, tellus about the response and what you're hearing
from people. It's been overwhelmingly positive, and especially our stores here in Greater
New Bedford were constantly restocking. Wecan't keep it on the shelves. The
(08:18):
community has certainly picked me and usup in our resturgence. People here in
New Bedford and on the South Coast, they really take a liking to small
businesses and those who who set upshop on the proverbial main street, right,
and they understand that small businesses herein Bedford make up the economic lifeblood
(08:41):
of what we all love and callhome. So with that being said,
the response has been unbelievable and Ican't think the people of not just New
Bedford, but the south coast,the south Shore Rhode Island. I can't
think them enough of their response sofar. And we're still well two people
were in the infancy stage of ourreascension. Yes, we're in the stores
(09:03):
and we're doing pretty well, butwe want to bring on more flavors.
We want to bring on additional locations, and we want to continue to grow
this and not just here in NewEngland. I mean there are spots all
over North America and throughout the worldwhere coffee syrup and coffee milk, other
flavorings for milk and other drinks areextremely popular, and we're going to try
(09:24):
to tap into those markets. Yeah, and then I guess my last question
is about you and your family beingsuch a family centric product for you,
What does your family have to sayabout this work and how do you feel
about watching Silmost Syrup essentially make acomeback like it has. Well. First
of all, before I could evengo forward with this, I have to
(09:46):
ask my wife if it were okay, because I gave up I gave up
a darn near close six figure asalary job to do this. And I
was a director of Business for theChamber of Commerce here in New Bedford in
the South Coast for over ten years, so of course I had to have
buying from home for my wife.And she said, look, you've been
talking about this for a while.If this is where your heart sat,
(10:07):
I know your grind, I knowyou're a work ethics so if you're going
to do it, both for it, and that's kind of what I've been
doing since March when I had relinquishedmy post at the Chamber. But the
family response has been fantastic. Myfather's been helping me out and the production
aspect. My father was the onewho made the syrups. I mean my
(10:28):
father somebody of the day. Itwas pretty crazy, said every batch of
any kind of silmos syrup from nineteeneighty three on he made. And he's
had his hands literally and so letthat sink in. That's pretty that's pretty
crazy. And so my father hasbeen helping me out of the law and
my mother, of course it washer father, my grandfather who owned the
(10:50):
company, so she has been rootingfor me as well and helping out when
appropriate behind the scenes. And thefamily support has been there because without support
a family, I can do whatI'm doing absolutely Okay, So let's get
to how people can find you.You've got a website, social media,
phone number. How can people geta hold of you? Sure, you
(11:13):
can find us on the web atsmile with Silmo dot com. You can
find us on Instagram. Our handleis at Silmo Syrup Altogether. On Facebook,
it's Silmo Packaging Co. Inc.Pyphen Silmo Syrup again, it's spelled
Si Lmo. And you can alwayscall our office at five zero eight four
(11:37):
nine six four three three five andwe're always open. You know, it
doesn't matter what kind of market agrocery store you have, no matter how
big or small you are. Ifyou think there's a need see a customer
base to grow, it's uh Syrupflavoring offerings. I would love to have
a conversation with you and talk abouthow we can perhaps be added into here
(11:58):
in the Tory right. Fantastic ianthis has been a great conversation. I
love when South Coast businesses thrive,so thank you again for the time and
all the best with the Sarah resurgence. You bet you, thank you very
much. I have a safe andhealthy weekend, and please join me again
next week for another edition of theshow. I'm Nicole Davis from WBZ News
(12:20):
Radio on iHeartRadio.
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