Spirit Foodservice of Andover
aka. Spir-It Brand Swizzle Sticks – United States
The story of the American swizzle stick is a stirring tale best told over a three-olive martini, or at least Jay Sindler might say so. After all, thats how the idea for the swizzle stick came to him. It was the winter of 1934, just months after the end of prohibition. The Boston native, who was a keen inventor and an employee of Maldens Converse Rubber Company, was enjoying a martini with a friend at The Ritz-Carlton hotel in Boston. All was going swimmingly until he found himself in a conundrum. In order to retrieve the martinis olive, he would either need to fumble with soaked fingers to pluck it from the bottom of his glass, or wait until his drink was empty. In that moment, Sindler, a natural visionary, imagined a simple tool that would go on to forever change the face of cocktailing: a pick uniquely designed to stab the olive with refinement. Within six months, Sindler had applied for a patent, founded Spir-it Inc. (today Spirit Foodservice of Andover; the Spir-it brand name is still used to market the companys swizzle sticks and picks), and placed an ad in The New Yorker, offering to personalize picks with the names of customers establishments. The garnish pick would, of course, act as a drink stirrer as well, giving rise to the American swizzle stick. In early 1967, sales were helped along with an order from a small, but rapidly growing, chain restaurant called McDonalds. Spir-it started to produce plastic utensils and coffee stirrers. Sales for the Spir-it Company sailed past the one million dollar mark in 1968.
38 Swizzle Sticks
