This popular hard seltzer is taking the country by storm; it was made in Southern Indiana

This time, it's Mom Water, an adult beverage invented by Jill and Bryce Morrison of Ferdinand, Indiana, that's quickly becoming a nationwide sensation.

The idea was originally Jill’s, brought on by a common problem: she knew what she wanted to buy, but couldn’t find it. Her solution was less common.

“In 2018 I was vacationing and found some fruit juice water I really liked,” she said. “I asked the bartender to put some vodka in it and I loved it. When I came home, I couldn’t find anything like it, so I started making it for myself. One day one of my kids got what they thought was a water out of the fridge and said, ‘Um, Mom, I don’t think this is water…’ after that I started writing ‘MOM’ on all those bottles and that’s how we got the name.”

What she wanted was a low-carb, low-sugar drink that, unlike the many seltzers, wasn’t carbonized and didn’t contain sweeteners. Once they had the drinks around the house and served them to a few friends, the idea of making it into a retail product started taking hold.

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Making the right hard seltzer

Jill directed the therapy department at a nursing home. Bryce, who has a past in business management and marketing, worked for Heart to Heart Hospice. The couple knew nothing about manufacturing or distribution of beverages, especially one that contains alcohol and must follow so many rules.

“It happened kind of organically,” Bryce said. “I was talking to a friend who knew somebody who knew about places to help you formulate an alcoholic beverage, so I told them about it. We had a branding idea with the Mom Water name and a unique product ... It really fit and fixed a problem.”

It wasn't all smooth sailing. The Morrisons poured themselves into the project and the production process was ready to begin in January 2020. Then came the pandemic. Smaller manufacturers shut down to make hand sanitizer, and they didn’t have the reach yet to use a large manufacturer.

“It was a trying year,” Bryce said. “We were putting our life savings into it and we had no customers because we couldn’t get it on the shelves.”

Once it did hit the shelves, it took off.

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How to buy Mom Water

Most local products must go through a lengthy process of vetting by various supermarkets and are picked up by one chain at a time, or maybe even by a single store, while the founder is delivering cases of product in their own vehicle.

That’s not how it worked for Mom Water. Once a beverage distributor picked it up, the growth was explosive. It’s available in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and Florida in restaurants, liquor stores and chains including Meijer, Target, Kroger, Schnuck’s and CVS. In the next few months, it will be available in 10 more states from Colorado to Maryland.

It’s available in four flavors, each labeled with a female name – passion fruit (Julie), which was the flavor Jill originally enjoyed on vacation, and three others chosen by votes from family and friends: lemon blueberry (Karen), blueberry peach (Linda), and coconut mango (Sandy). The only ingredients are water, vodka, natural fruit flavor and citric acid.

The can design is pastel and feminine, and combined with the “Mom” moniker, you might think the drink’s audience is overwhelmingly female, but that’s not the case.

“We’re kind of surprised a lot of younger men are drinking it,” Jill said. “It’s become a trend on college campuses, and we’re told there are as many male as female drinkers.”

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“We were at a wine show in Florida and there were 60-year-old guys being (dragged) over by their wives,” Bryce said. “They loved it. We looked around and the guys were all drinking it. The pastel colors are what guys wear to the golf course, and I think there’s been a change in culture and they’re not afraid to drink anything.”

Jill and Bryce quit their other jobs this past October to devote themselves full-time to Mom Water; the company has a dozen employees now.

“I think the success has to do with timing,” Bryce said. “We’re coming off seltzers, which set the stage for people wanting low-calorie, low-carb drinks. But now there are so many of them there’s kind of seltzer fatigue. And coming off COVID, people are more concerned with health and what they’re putting in their body. And we have an amazing team that has been instrumental in helping us achieve this growth.”