Kitsap siblings started elderberry syrup businesses. Then, a pandemic happened.

BREMERTON – Convinced of elderberry's immunity-boosting benefits, siblings Nate Sylling and Diana Frazier each got into the business of making elderberry syrup in late 2018.

Hoping to cut down on sick days, Sylling and his wife, Lindsey, started brewing batches in Port Orchard. Frazier, raising four kids that passed illnesses between them, made it out of her Poulsbo home.

Somehow, neither knew of the other’s plans to enter the elderberry market.

“It’s a pretty crazy story,” admitted Frazier.

Today, on different ends of Kitsap, the two families brew an increasingly popular blend of syrup that mixes in other claimed immunity boosters — honey, echinacea and ginger. And as novel coronavirus spreads, they’re filling orders at record-setting levels. Dozens of orders come in each day.

“It’s been a whirlwind,” said Frazier, who’s working 70 hours a week brewing and bottling while raising her kids. “The demand is unprecedented.”

Whether Sambucus — a genus of flowering plant more often known as elderberry — can do anything to help fight against novel coronavirus is unclear. But as is the case in a pandemic, products that peddle immunity benefits like elderberry are likely to surge.

But why is elderberry popular in the first place?

There are two main reasons they are credited for providing immunity, according to Dr. Jenn Dazey, a professor of botanical medicine at Bastyr University in Seattle. The berries have been shown in studies to have anti-viral properties, she said, by enhancing the production of what are called cytokines, a particularly important small protein in the immune system.

Secondly, the flowers of the elderberry have been found to be a diaphoretic – that is, they help you sweat when you have a fever. A common misnomer is that a fever is caused by a virus, Dazey said. But that fever is actually the body’s response in fighting the virus.

“The older we get our bodies have a hard time making a good fever and sustaining it,” she said.

For the Sylling family, the elderberry was a godsend. When Nate started working at the Kitsap Rescue Mission as its operations director, he began to fall ill more often. Lindsey was pregnant, and the family was seeking a way to stay healthy.

As they looked up and down the supermarket aisles, they found only “triage” medicines, things that would help with symptoms. They also were looking for something natural.

“We wanted something we could feel safe giving it to ourselves and to our kids,” Lindsey said. “So we started making it for ourselves.”

Nate said he went from being sick about eight times a year to one.

For his sister, Diana Frazier, it was the start of the school year for her children — and the illnesses they brought home and passed around — that pushed her to seek help.

“I went down the rabbit hole and said, ‘Oh wow, this is legit."

She acknowledges the family’s illnesses didn’t go away entirely, but she says they were greatly diminished with a daily dose of elderberry syrup. And when she told friends, they also wanted some. So she started making it for them.

“I reached a point where I said, ‘Alright, I’ll sell some,’” she noted.

Both the businesses — Sylling's Elderberry and Frazier’s Poulsbo Elderberry — are selling their inventories fast in the pandemic. Frazier said she’s sold out seven times in the past two weeks. The Syllings are getting orders for 150 bottles a day, roughly four times their sales in February.

They each sell syrup and a do-it-yourself kit, where buyers can control how much sugar they put in, Frazier said. (Boiling is necessary for the raw product because it is poisonous in its original state.) A 16-ounce bottle retails on the Syllings' website for $22.

There’s concern that demand for the product will continue to outlast supply. Elderberry syrup makers source their berries from Eastern Europe. The Syllings favor berries grown in Poland. They are scrambling to get more.

“We’re riding a thin line right now,” said Nate Sylling, who brewed his latest batch at the Gig Harbor Elks’ commercial kitchen on Thursday.

Sylling said what started as a way to keep their family healthy has become a profitable business, and they enjoy helping the community discover the benefits of elderberries.

“It has been a super fun wild ride, scaling this business,” he said.