Meet Dillon Toms, the “Water Batman” of Shreve Island

By the time I met Dillon Toms, I’d begun to wonder whether or not he really existed.

Several friends had told me about a young Springhill native who was in the process of bootstrapping a business selling Costa Rican volcano water out of his garage in Shreve Island. I’m a food and drink writer from Springhill and I live in Shreve Island, a small enclave of middle-class Shreveport where folks generally know their neighbors. If there was a Costa Rican volcano water company located next door, you’d think that I would know. 

In the punishing cold of Fat Tuesday, nearly every patio and carport on my street collapsed. Water mains ruptured and grocery stores emptied. The sound of bald tires spinning on ice-covered streets was so incessant that it became like a nature sound to my ears, like cicadas buzzing. 

Days after water service was restored to my house, the water remained visibly unsafe to drink. I found myself talking to a friend for help locating bottled water, which was impossible to find on foot. That friend put me on the phone with Putt Putman.
 
Putt is the owner of a disaster clean-up service called Putman Restoration. Stuffed & Busted readers would recognize Putt’s cherry-red ‘63 Chevy Impala lowrider, which was recently featured on a Great Raft Brewing can.

“I got a buddy who’s got all sorts of Costa Rican water,” Putt said. “It’s delicious water, for real. Let me call my buddy. He lives in your neighborhood.”

I scrambled for a pen in the darkness.

“Wait a minute, Putt,” I stammered. “Does your buddy run a Costa Rican volcano water company out of his garage?”

“You know Dillon?”

A few weeks later, I walked two blocks down Captain Shreve Drive, tucked my notepad under my arm and knocked on Dillon Toms’ door.

Dillon and I sat across from one another in his living room. He gathered his thoughts and leaned forward. 

“I’m the water Batman,” he said.

The water Batman of Shreve Island works by day as an automotive finance guru at a high-end car dealership in Shreveport. When his day job ends, Dillon turns his attention to Pura, the Costa Rican volcano water company that is, in fact, headquartered in his two-car garage. (Here’s the Pura Facebook page, if you’d like to follow their journey.)

When I sat down with Dillon in March, he’d sold more than 29,000 bottles of Pura—mostly one or two cases at a time—in the previous 12 months. Pura was gaining a foothold locally. He’d won coveted retail shelf space at independent grocers like Drug Emporium, Airline Drug, Cuban Liquor, Maxwell’s Market, and Cush’s Grocery. Things were looking up, but profitability remained an oasis on the horizon.

“Let me just tell you: There is no money whatsoever to be made selling small quantities of bottled water,” Dillon said matter-of-factly.

Then why do it?

Dillon told me that he sits down and talks with millionaires every day. He waves bon voyage to successful entrepreneurs as they drive their new Jaguars and Range Rovers off of the lot. One day, he’d like to be the one in the car, instead of the one doing the waving. He makes no effort to disguise or restrain his ambition.

“Yeah, I want Pura to be successful, for me and my family,” he said. “But at the end of the day, if you don’t have something that you’re passionate about, what are you doing it for?”

Pura is bottled at the source on a 120-year-old cattle farm in Costa Rica’s Parque Nacional Juan Castro Blanco, a protected mountain forest that is home to three extinct volcanoes, “cloud forests,” and countless rivers and waterfalls.    

“The first time I tried this water, it was five days old, it was straight out of the mountain. No one else in America has this water,” Dillon said, handing me a bottle of Pura.

“Six months later, I emptied my savings, cleared out my 401-K, and Katelyn and I took a trip to Costa Rica.”

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During that 2018 trip, Dillon met with the farmer who owned the land where Pura water is gathered and filtered. The two connected online after Dillon read about the farm’s water and sent an introductory email. He toured the bottling facility and learned about everything from label design to the Costa Rican water table. He saw for himself what made this water taste better.

“You have what are called ‘forever chemicals,’ chemicals that can’t be stripped out of water,” he said. “The only way to get them out of the water is to never let them get in. You have to find an origin that’s never even had those chemicals in the water table in the first place, and that’s Costa Rica. It’s the greenest country in the world.” 

As our interview wrapped up, Dillon led me into the garage to show me his remaining stock: a shrink-wrapped half-pallet of Pura containing about 1,000 bottles. He was beginning to prepare the space for his next shipment of 30,440 bottles, which would just barely fit into the garage.  

Since he saw Costa Rica, Dillon has been thinking about all of those plastic bottles. He and Katelyn are looking into biodegradable bottles made of algae. They’re also tossing around ideas for new products including infused waters and seltzers. Dillon will tell you that Pura can and will be a $100 million business in 10 years. He and Katelyn are already discussing their philanthropic initiatives. 

Dillon’s sheer confidence is enough to make me believe he could be right. I wouldn’t bet against him.    

“Hey,” Dillon called behind me as I walked down the driveway. “Let’s schedule the next interview for a year from today.”

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