Dad Water founder Bryce Morrison and Ryan French announce a new partnership between Any Given Monday and Dad Water. Morrison discusses how the company got started, Dad Water’s connection to golf, and their brand ambassador, Roger Sloan.
Welcome back to Any Given Monday. This is truly an exciting uh guest, Bryce Morrison, the founder of Dad Water, Mom Water, our newest sponsor. And I hate to start this off with a serious take, Bryce, because uh I try not to be too serious, but uh it’s companies like yourself that uh allow me to do this. So, first of all, just thank you. Uh I can’t I can’t thank you enough for your support. Absolutely, man. Um, big golf fan, big golfer, fan of yours. Um, I’m really glad we were able to, uh, you know, Chris, credit to him for kind of finding things. He’s great at figuring these things out and finding the right partnerships and, you know, he brought it to the table and everybody was like, “Yeah, we’re in.” So, love it. Appreciate the opportunity. Awesome. Let’s start with what, how did you start this? How did you get into the alcoholic drink business? What where did it start? Bit of a wild story. Um the the kind of cliffnos version is Jill was uh Jill and I were at a resort back in 2018 in the Dominican and she stumbled across this passion fruit infused water and she would hydrate with it every day. Um she liked it so much by the end of the week she was filling up her Yeti. She’d go to the bar and just say, “Hey, you know what? Can you just put a little vodka in here? I don’t want to taste it, but I want to keep drinking this water because it’s so refreshing. Um, so when we got back home, she and her friends were drinking seltzers that summer because they were blowing up and she looked at me and said, “Hey, how can I recreate that thing in the Dominican? We like these seltzers, but we feel terrible at the end of the day.” Um, so she started making these little concoctions in like a Dani water bottle. She would take a little swig of the water out, replace it with some flavored vodka, throw it in the cooler, and all her friends started noticing she was drinking these water bottles. They know her well enough to know she wasn’t drinking water. Um, which then, you know, she would they would try it. They really liked it. So, these little water bottles kind of started popping up a little bit everywhere. There’d be some in the fridge and the cooler. We do have three kids and inevitably they, you know, accidentally pulled one of these out thinking it’s a Dani and took a swig which prompted me to ask her like, “Hey, can you maybe do something and make sure these are marked differently.” So, she took a pen, she scribbled mom on all of her water bottles and, you know, kudos. Technically, her friends came up with the term, they started calling it Jill’s mom water because she was always seen drinking out of one of these Danis that said mom. So, um, she kudos to her. She’s the one who originally kind of came up with the the concept and the idea and she came to me and said, you know, we should do this. And I’m like, by do this? What do you mean? She’s like, we should make it. Said, it doesn’t exist in the market. My friends love it. And we got a name. We could call it mom water. And uh I was like, yeah, that all sounds great, but no way. It didn’t seem conceivable. It didn’t seem doable. It’s impossible. Um and about nine to 10 months of convincing, finally, I was like, you know, I agree. Like it has legs. But we were both in healthcare. I was in kind of sales and marketing for a hospice. She worked at a nursing home and she ran their therapy department. And so we didn’t have any background at all. And so I kind of finally said, “Okay, let’s see what we can do.” And one thing led to another. And now here we are. We’re we’re a top 13 brand nationally. And um still trying to figure out our way. We are in the most crowded category in alcohol. It’s cutthroat. Uh it’s wild. and we don’t have quite the uh the pocketbook of all the the big players, but uh we compete with them. So, uh it’s been fun and and uh it’s been a crazy ride. Are you both not are you both not working anymore outside of Mom and Dadwater? Correct. So, um we released we started the project in January of 2020, which go figure about three months later when COVID hits. Uh took us about a year and a half so to get it to shelves. And so we we sold our first case in Indiana in March of 21. Kentucky came on board the month later. And by the end of that year, so within six months, we had seen like the sales just kind of took off very organically, a lot of Tik Tok, a lot of virality. And we had our our longtime friend John Bell. He kind of approached us and we were talking. He loved the idea, the concept. He’d sampled. He was like, “Listen,” he’s like, “If you ever He’s like, “I think you should technically take this thing kind of to the moon.” He’s like, “If you ever want help, I’m in.” He had just kind of semi-retired. He owns another company and u he had the knowhow. I’m very right brain. I’m a very unorganized but creative individual. And John is kind of the exact opposite. He is super organized. He understands the operations. Um and and creativity wasn’t his thing. And so great pairing uh between Jill, John, and myself. And so we brought him on board within about six or seven months and first thing he said you know he invested he’s a part owner now with us and he was like listen guys probably should consider quitting your job we got a lot of work to do and uh so within two months we had quit our job of John coming on board. So by the end of that year of release our first case we had quit hired my sister uh who is now our CEO and hired our our long my longtime friend Jason to help run our sales and um we were kind of off to the races. I assume it had to be like whirlwind. I mean, you again, we talk often about companies that align with what I do. Like, I had no idea this was going to be a thing. My son had brain surgery and I’ve never gone back to work. Uh I assume it had to be a whirlwind. Like, whoa, what the hell has happened? And all of a sudden, I was just like in sales in a hospital and now I’m selling uh you know, mom water to people. It It still is. It doesn’t get old. It doesn’t uh it it it I don’t even know if three and a half four years later it’s really sunk in. Um you know because like I said our jobs were very very different. Our lives were very different. You know we find ourselves now working all the time. Um obviously stress in different ways but at the same time you know we’re at country music fests and we’re in golf courses. Like it’s a lot more fun because where there’s alcohol there’s usually fun. So it’s it’s kind of wild very surreal. So I have some cans here. I’ll start with mom water, but they have names. Are the names friends of Jill’s or are these just like Okay, some have no meaning. Like the first four that we did, again, we really didn’t think this would be a thing. We were kind of almost making it for ourselves and hoping we can get it on shelves locally. So, the first ones were kind of random. Like, Linda came from a a YouTube video with a little boy pleading with his mom like, “Listen, Linda.” It’s the Listen, Linda YouTube. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, we didn’t we picked Karen before the meme and then the meme happened. We just kept it. Um, now the most recent one. So, Kathy, the one you got, that’s my mom. So, we did not put our names on the can. So, Jill was like, I don’t want my name on a can. So, Julie, the original flavor was the only one with any meaning. That’s her alter ego. It’s what our kids call her sometimes. And, uh, so now, you know, Louise is our brand new flavor. That’s Jill’s mom. John’s mom is Mary. Uh, John’s wife, Bobby. Carol is her mom. And my mom is Kathy. So, we’ve started, we also have community voted ones. So, our social community has voted on some. We just ran a contest for new flavors in the future to name one after a mega fan. So, we try to involve. We have a really, really rabid and cool community of followers and fans. And so, we really try to get them involved as much as we can. And and I assume, Bryce, that really differentiates you in a in a in a super crowded space, right? is like instead of like, oh, I’m gonna have, you know, lime or I’m gonna have blood orange, you’re like, I’m gonna have a a name, right? Like it’s it differentiates you in in the in a tough space. Yeah. Big time. And and what’s funny is so that was, you know, again, we joke Jill’s the inside of our ca of our mom water cans. I’m more the outside. I’m more creative. And so when we started, I was like, if we’re going to do this and it’s called mom water, it needs to be a celebration of motherhood, moms, all thing mom. So, you know, the flavor should be secondary to maybe these these let’s give these cans personality. And so, we decided to put a name with each flavor and wasn’t really sure if it would work. I’m like, it it might not come off that way. People might think it’s corny. Well, turns out it’s one of the cooler things that happens. And it again, it doesn’t get old at all going and hearing someone at a bar go up and say, “I need two Lindas, a Karen and a Susan, you know, or a Gary or a Rodney or a Tom.” It it it uh has become kind of our calling card and it’s it’s really cool and I think our fans get it. I mean, it’s honestly the hardest thing to do is not develop a flavor, it’s to pick a name for that flavor. Yeah. Uh so, how far along in this process was Dad Water? Was Dad Water uh an addition to Mom Water or was it always like, “Hey, eventually we’ll have Dad Water.” We really never thought we would do Dad Water. Um, we did trademark it back in the day, but that was only to protect mom water, protect somebody else from maybe trying to use dad water. Um, but then we kept getting this question every time we were sampling and it’d be usually a guy about my age like wait where’s dad water and we would just kind of blow it off and like that’s beer or bourbon or whatever. And so we finally said, you know, there might be something here. The only thing missing from the mom water brand obviously is, you know, it is a very feminine brand. Um, it’s for moms. It’s supposed to be that way. So, we’re like, you know, maybe some guys don’t want to drink out of a paint can, but they like the concept of what we’re doing, which is spirit water. And u so that’s kind of how it was born. And and and when we started it, you know, like I I I do like tequila. I like a lot of spirits. Um but a lot of people now are really wanting to get into tequila. There’s a lot better tequila options than when I was younger. Um, and there’s a lot more ways to to drink tequila, but really no one has gotten a tequila RTD, like canned drink, right? It’s either a margarita or they carbonate it. And so, we wanted this to be a little more about the tequila, make it drinkable, and try to substitute something that gives you light beer vibes, but no carbonation, you know, so you can drink a bunch, they’re light on flavor, just like your light beer. And, um, so that’s kind of what we set out to do. We launched about a year and a half ago, kind of soft. Um, we we made a lot of mistakes. We we always do. We made a lot of mistakes when we launched with Dabwater. The variety pack on the outside was really just not not good from a design standpoint. It blended in too much. Didn’t say what the product was. So, really this year is almost like a complete relaunch of the brand. Like, we have a lot of fans out there and we did pretty good, but people weren’t We would sample it and we’d sell out. You put it on a shelf and it would sit. People weren’t the product. Yeah. They didn’t know what it was. So we went through did a complete rebranding this year. So really this is almost like ground zero for us because now that the packaging is in the market. Um a lot bigger pull a lot better things happening and and we also have a focus on Dabwater this year. We just kind of set it in the market and let it go. We’re doing things like this. Yeah. So basically what you did was like at these events as you went you’d be like yeah mom water is super popular. And then when the guy asks you’re like yeah we do have dad water. And now it’s kind of a focus. So, let’s go through the few that I’ve sent that uh Bryson’s team, Kristen’s team sent me a bunch. This is Tom, uh Steve, my favorite, Rodney, and Gary. Those are the four I have. They’re I mean, awesome. Uh like I played golf yesterday and it’s it’s perfect, right? It’s like back to your point. It’s like, you know, I’m a bourbon drinker. Drink Jack and Coke and like super heavy. You drink like three of them, you’re buzzed already, you’re feeling full, you have a ton of calories. So, this is perfect. Like, it was, you know, warm out yesterday. And that’s kind of it. I assume Bryce is like football, whatever, tailgating, hanging out at home, or if you just want to have a couple at night. It’s not like a a heavy beer where you’re just like sitting in your gut. Exactly. And and the crazy thing is like, you know, when we started it, we’re like, well, these are going to be probably a lot of tequila drinkers are going to like it. But then what we started seeing were folks like yourself that maybe like Highballs or a lot of light beer drinkers. Like, weirdly enough, Bush Light, Miller, Light, like all those light beers. I have buddies that were like, I don’t like mom water. Um, they drink beer, light beer. And they were like, I like these dad waters. I don’t understand why. We kind of sat down and we talked about it a little bit, you know, and and when you really think about it, it does kind of make sense. Again, it goes back to why are you drinking Bush Light? Well, you’re not drinking Bush Light because of flavor. It’s it’s a very lightly flavored beer. If if you like big bowl flavor, you’re drinking IPAs and stouts and things like that. Bush Light’s meant to be crushable, meant to be able to session a bunch of them. Um, always have something in your hand and you can drink them and and you don’t necessarily feel terrible at the end of the day. Exact same thing for dad water. It gives you that without having to, you know, if you want something other than beer, what kind of scratches that itch, if you will, and and Dad Water kind of does. You can drink, you know, you can drink more of them. They’re lighter. They’re light on flavor. Um, and so, yeah, it’s it’s it’s And now we just come out with six packs of individual flavors. So, because we have a lot of guys are like, I don’t know about the variety pack, but they’re like, I’d drink that Tom or that Gary all day long, Rodney, Steve. So, uh, yeah, it’s it’s interesting. We’re seeing a lot of those folks that maybe just haven’t had an option uh that are starting to kind of go, let me try one of these even though I’m not a tequila guy. They try it and they’re like, “Wow, I like these for some reason.” So awesome. Uh let’s talk about Roger. So uh if you’re listening this pod, Roger’s probably on before this. Roger Sloan, Canadian, uh PGA tour, back on the corn ferry tour. He’s kind of been back and forth. it kind of why where uh Bryce’s employee Chris got a hold of me and trying to and why it’s a great partnership for me. It’s it’s good content for me to kind of follow Roger. So, how did that relationship uh come up come about, Bryce? Yeah. So in early on somebody from the PGA kind of reached out and they had seen some they’d had some of our mom water drinks and they were like you know these are great and and they seem like a golf course drink because golf is usually hot weather you’re sweating all day and these things are almost like hydrating and refreshing and we’re like yeah we agree. So we decided we were trying to decide do we partner with the tour and do like event based stuff or do we partner with a player and we really wanted that you know to to partner with the player side. So they kind of gave us a big list of a bunch of players and we said, you know, we’d love it if they got a little bit of social. We’d love it if their wife is kind of involved somehow because we’re mom water at the time. We were mostly mom water. Um actually we’re all mom water. And so we started looking at them and and honestly with Roger, we were like, you know, we we weren’t looking for a top player. Like that’s not a we we can’t afford a top player and b we’re like we like to find good humans, you know, we like to find just good genuinely good people. uh that’s who we hire and that’s who we want to partner with. Uh which is why we’re here. And um so with Roger, you know, they were like, he’s one of the best guys you’ll ever meet. His wife is the head of the PGA Wives Association. She kind of helps run that charity and everything else. We’re like, man, that sounds like a great person. From the first call, um from the first time, Roger was just kind of like, you know, hey, we kind of got burnt by an agent back in the day, so it’s just us. And he’s like, we do our own things and we try to find people that believe in us and that want to be long-term partners. and we were like that that’s what we’re looking for. Like we’re looking for people that we can partner with but but it’s not a corporate partnership. It’s a friendship uh between you and our team. And that’s really what it’s become. Um we we support him every year um no matter what. You know, our budgets change sometimes. And so we’ve gone from shirt to hat to shirt, but we’re always wanting to do something. And to our discredit, you know what we don’t know is we’re not great at activating partnerships. you know, we we have them. And that was just us not understanding how to do that. And that’s where Chris has come into play. He understands that, which is he was like, you know, we should, you know, full swing is a big deal, right? You know, it’s bringing more people into golf. They get to see a different side of players and really and and but what it doesn’t do is it doesn’t do that for all the players you might not know about. It it does it for players that you already kind of know and now you’re getting to know them better. So, we were like, man, wouldn’t it be great if we could let more people understand and meet Roger and know who he is as a person because they’ll instantly be a fan. So, that’s kind of how we got here. Um, you know, he’s been, you know, PGA Corn Ferry, PGA Cornferryy, and we have been as sponsors, um, for I I want to say this is our fourth year now, maybe. Um, so yeah, it’s just it’s a great friendship, great partnership. Texting it’s, you know, today, I don’t know when the podcast is airing, but it’s his birthday today. So, yeah. All right. So, it’s it’s it’s a it’s a great partnership. Um, so what’s the goal? I mean, is this what is the ultimate goal, Bryce? Or have you is it even like for me? Like there’s an ultimate goal, but it’s not even a part of my daytoday because it’s just like head down. Let’s go sell, you know, some money Q stuff. So, like what is there an ultimate goal just to grow what you’re doing? Yeah. you know, we kind of think we have a chance to maybe create a bit of a legacy um you know, maybe for our kids, um for our friends, like things like that, uh our family, and and really it’s just we’re not uh we’re not necessarily big money hungry folks. Uh that’s not what motivates us. We don’t have to grow 200 100% every year and and everything else. Yes, I’m a competitive person by nature. I want to win. uh you know, we want to continue to grow, but you know, we’re also good with nice slow steady growth. We want our brand to be around for a long time. Uh it’s not something we’re necessarily looking to just flip and and get out of it. Um you know, it’s it’s a really tough industry. I mean, a really tough industry, you know, and we’ve grown organically like crazy for years and now it’s really hard to grow because you have everyone throwing all their money into this category of alcohol. Um, so really for us is to continue to grow. Um, to continue to kind of build our team and, you know, creep our way up the list. Uh, you know, our we want to do a million cases in a in a calendar year. We’re doing it on a rolling month. You know, we’re right at about a million case brand. Um, but we have a fraction of the distribution of most of our competition. And so that’s really our thing is continuing to go wide. We want to grow the Dagab brand even more. Um, and we have all kinds of fun innovations on the horizon for next year and the years beyond. So that, you know, kind of like you, there’s really I don’t know that I’d call it being an ultimate goal. We just know we want to continue to grow this and every time we get to do a partnership or we get to hire someone, we feel like we have a chance to maybe change someone’s life for the better. Give me the one minute. What is like what is your sales pitch, Bryce, to someone who has never tried it? What when you’re standing in front doing a tasting or whatever that is, what is the one minute pitch on dead water, what is it? I’ll always ask them if they’ve tried it first. If they’ve not, I say, “Listen, this is going to drink like water. We don’t do any bubbles. We don’t do any sweetener. We’re the only product on the market that’s known of that doesn’t do any carbonation and any kind of sweetener. No artificial, nothing. It’s going to drink like spa water. So, if you take, you know, I always say for the dab water, if you took a tequila and you proofed that tequila down, you added enough water to where it’s now just 5.25%. Very light tequila flavor, mostly water, and then you took a little bit of fruit, and you just squeezed a few drops in it, just to where like the fruit’s been sitting in the water. You get just enough of that, but you’re going to taste a little tequila, a little fruit, and it’s going to drink like a can of water. Um, that’s really what we are. We we’re going for light, easy drinking, sessionable, and something that at the end of the day and especially the next morning, you don’t feel quite as bad. Like that’s, you know, in at the end of the day, you’re drinking a can that’s like 95% water. Uh and that’s what we are. We’re calling it spirit water. Um inadvertently, we created a category of alcohol. No one knew what they still really don’t know what to do with us. We’re not a seltzer. We’re not a We’re not a readyto drink cocktail. Well, we’re not a cocktail. We’re not a tea. We’re not a lemonade. We’re not a beer. What are we? Um, so we’ve coined the term spirit water. Mom water is the original and number one spirit water. And dad water is uh really the number two spirit water. So we have uh that category we’ve created. So a lot of education required for our products to know what you’re getting into. But man, the one thing is when people go in with an open mind and they try it, uh, their eyes are kind of open because the more that you drink them, the more you get it. Yeah. I assume you went into this, Bryce, with like, oh, hey, here’s mom water where it’s going to be and where’s dad water going to be. What’s the craziest place you’ve heard that mom water was or dad water has been? Like you’re like, “Oh, it’ll never be there.” and you’re like, “Holy someone at the Kentucky Derby is drinking it or or whatever.” Where where’s the craziest spot you’ve seen it or get requested for it? Um, boy, we’ve had a few. We’ve had a lot of people love to smuggle a mom water somewhere and send us a picture. I remember back in the day that the first time we saw in Hawaii, uh, which was really cool. We’ve seen it in maybe even uh I I don’t know that we’ve seen it in another country yet because that’s hard to get some of that through uh through customs. But um you know honestly some of it was like some of the stadiums like we got brought into a few stadiums really early on. Cambridge Fieldhouse you know we’re a partner of the Pacers um and every time we go to a game as much as I’m watching the game and I’m a huge you know Pacers fan I’m also watching the crowd and and every time I see somebody with a mom water walk by uh we love it. We have company parties there a lot of times and we’ll have a you know a box for our employees and you know we’ve had folks before we call them out in the crowd and we’re like we love you you know we’ve all got mom water pacers jerseys and so you know that kind of stuff uh it happens all the time it’s an absolute blast. I think one of honestly one of the neater placements that we’ve got just happened very recently which is PopStroke. Um Popstroke brought us in nationally. They approached us uh for Mom Water uh because it is our our core brand right now and uh you know they only carry like three or maybe four canned drinks uh nationally and it’s a they’re a huge account. They’re a perfect account for us. You know again it’s golf. They if you’re a golfer you probably understand our product better than the average consumer because we’re in hot weather. We’re there for a long period of time. We still want to drink. Uh but it gets harder as the day goes on. So, Popstroke is a really cool one. Uh, we did a bunch of Mother’s Day activations with them and and uh it’s going great and and we love that one. Awesome. Bryce, exciting things ahead. Uh, Roger is awesome and Roger and I have been friendly prior to this. So, an easy an easy partnership for me. Uh, I love the fact that, you know, again, we’ve talked about this, Chris and I have talked about this a lot is like our stories align. I love being associated with companies like that. Like I was running a group of restaurants and somehow I have a podcast and uh YouTube channel and my own company of reporting golf stories. It’s uh and so the fact that two healthcare employees now own uh their own, you know, uh Spirit Water Company is is a wild trip. So, uh thank you. Thanks for the thanks for the time. Thanks for the partnership and I can’t wait to get started. Absolutely. appreciate you. Appreciate everything you do. And uh it’s going to be a fun year. Can’t wait to see what all pops up.
