After four years in business, Indiana's 'Mom Water' company continues to expand

A Southern Indiana couple is celebrating four years since starting a business that has been popular with cocktail drinkers across America.

Jill and Bryce Morrison of Ferdinand are the founders of Mom Water, an alcoholic beverage brand that offers an all-natural flavored water cocktail with vodka. With no added sugar or artificial sweeteners and containing 90 calories, it's aimed to be a healthier alternative to traditional seltzers.

It was something that Jill thought of following a vacation with her family.

"We honestly stumbled across all of this through Jill's experimentation," Bryce said.

Before opening the company, Jill worked as an occupational therapist in a nursing home while Bryce was a community education director for a hospice care facility.

While the family was on vacation, they stayed at a resort where Jill kept a glass of passion fruit-infused water. After falling in love with the water by itself, she decided to ask the bartender if they'd add vodka to it. She immediately fell in love with the cocktail.

After returning, Jill started to make a similar drink for their friends and family in water bottles. They would mark all the bottles with "mom" to avoid confusion in their house − they have three children who drink a lot of water.

"She started writing 'mom' on all her water bottles so they would know that if they saw a Dasani water bottle, and it said 'mom' on it, that was mom's," Bryce said. "Jill's Mom Water" was the name all her friends gave whenever she made some for everyone.

It took about nine months for the Morrisons to convince themselves to start the business, as neither had experience working in the alcohol industry, nor were they licensed or experienced bartenders.

"We were a bunch of non-alcohol industry folks just trying to have fun and do our thing," he said.

They decided to take the plunge in January 2020.

Launching during the COVID-19 pandemic

The pandemic put a hold on the Morrisons' plans as they were looking for a distillery and balancing their existing full-time jobs and family.

While Jill spent her time in the nursing home doing therapy and essential care, Bryce worked in a more remote setting. He did some of his original job but he could not return in person to the different healthcare facilities that he would normally travel to.

This allowed him extra time to research small distilleries that could mass produce what they were looking for.

Many distelleries were creating hand sanitizer during the early days of the pandemic, and they weren't looking for new customers. Many wouldn't have the capacity for the extra production, anyway.

Eventually, the Morrisons found a company that would help them start their inventory.

"We jokingly (said) that we broke them because they couldn't produce what we needed," Jill said with a laugh.

Since then, they've gone through three more packagers before finally settling on one that use now in Wisconsin.

Choosing the flavors for Mom Water

Mom Water boasts eight different flavors, ranging from tropical to tart.

The Morrisons leaned on friends and family to help come up with the varieties.

Occasionally, they'd have a group over for a "roundtable" event where they'd present 15 potential flavors and try to narrow it down to four or five. Over the course of several meetings, the Morrisons were able to come up with the original four flavors and a second variety pack that launched later on.

"They were like, 'If we like it, then we hope that everyone else will," Bryce said.

Memes and naming

The Morrisons also had fun with naming each flavor.

"Julie," the original passion fruit flavor of the brand, is a whimsical alter ego that the Morrison kids coined for their mother. Other flavor names also had some kind of connection to friends, family members and their fans.

They chose "Susan" for their strawberry kiwi flavor and "Nancy" for their pineapple-orange flavor after a big social media poll in 2022.

There's also "Karen" for the bold, lemon-blueberry flavor and "Linda" for the cool blueberry peach flavor. "Linda" is based on the popular 2014 "Listen Linda" meme of Linda Beltran trying to get her 3-year-old son to stop arguing with her.

There's also apple-melon flavored "Mary" and blackberry-lime flavored "Kathy."

'We're just having fun'

Being one of the only known liquor-infused water sellers, the Morrisons have been able to create a large market for themselves.

Their products are available in retail stores across 36 states and online in 42. In 2023, the company sold 743,000 cases and was available in more than 20,000 retail stores.

It also led them to launch "Dad Water" − a canned, tequila-based drink aimed to poke good fun at fathers. The four flavors include pineapple jalapeno, blood orange, grapefruit, and lime with "dad" names to go along with them.

"Our biggest thing is we want a clean beverage," Bryce said. "We want something that you don't feel terrible after you drink a few."

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: After four years in business, Indiana's 'Mom Water' company continues to expand