Jason Vickers named his company after his mission: Natoncks Metsu means 'feeding my cousins' in Nipmuc. But the Seattle entrepreneur's journey to creating a thriving Indigenous soda syrup business began in the most unlikely place—a prison cell.
Vickers grew up in Seattle, wandering Pike Place Market as a child and later cooking at restaurants like Café Campagne. He ran a successful food truck called Fez on Wheels. But after losing his mother, he struggled with addiction and experienced homelessness. In November 2016, exhausted from running, he turned himself in to police in a parking garage behind Hot Mama's Pizza.
In prison, Indigenous fellow inmates embraced Vickers and connected him to cultural traditions he had never fully experienced growing up as an 'urban Native' from the Hassanamisco Band of Nipmuc Nation. That connection transformed his life.
After his release, Vickers attended the 2019 Paddle to Lummi gathering, where inspiration struck. He remembered once accidentally over-sweetening a raspberry rosemary sorbet until it wouldn't freeze—so he had added it to club soda instead. That memory, combined with Indigenous plant medicines, became Salish Style, his first soda syrup. It was an immediate hit.
Vickers learned to forage, which transformed his relationship with nature. 'It's the same woods. It's just a whole different place,' he says. He steeps fresh cedar tips for his Enchanted Forest syrup, and water from blanching foraged nettles goes into the Honey Nettle flavor.
Today, Natoncks Metsu makes seven syrup flavors, including the citrus-and-cedar Salish Style and rosemary-lemon Lumminade. Rainier Beach's zero-proof bar Rosette uses his lavender-white sage syrup, and the Snoqualmie-owned Salish Lodge sells his products in its gift shop.
'As Indigenous people, the moment of reawakening someone's relationship to these plant medicines, and watching it happen, is absolutely magical,' Vickers says. 'We use our traditional plant medicine to smudge, to clean ourselves, to refresh ourselves—and this is literally just another way to do just that.'