Plus Brand CEO Chad Willis
Grocery aisles seem to be bursting with functional beverages. From alkaline waters to mood-boosting drinks to elixirs that promise skin-enhancing benefits, these beverages are booming. In fact, sales of functional drinks increased by almost 16% between November 2020 and November 2021, according to data firm Spins. With consumers taking a more proactive approach toward wellness, functional beverages are one of the fastest-growing categories in grocery. Within that category, alkaline water sales also show no signs of slowing down. According to Beverage Marketing Corp., retail sales in the alkaline water category are expected to balloon to $1.3 billion by 2023, representing 20% of the entire value-added water category. Enter Sheridan, Wyo.-based Plus Brand Industries, which offers an alkaline water designed to appeal to the consumer looking for a functional beverage that heals the body and the planet. Plus Brand CEO Chad Willis talked to Progressive Grocer about the popularity of alkaline water, his All-Scratch Technology and the future of the beverage industry.
Progressive Grocer: Chad, how did you come to start a career in beverage innovation?
Chad Willis: My entire life, since I was a kid, I’ve been super interested in health, nutrition and food. I owned my first health club by the time I was 19 years old, and I stayed in that business until about my mid-20s. I got a degree in business and was offered a big finance job. I took the job in finance, but I hated it. So I started dabbling in food, beverage and supplements. Nowadays, I wake up every day by 3:30 in the morning excited for the day doing something I really like.
PG: Tell me about the evolution of Plus Brand Industries.
CW: Well, I had created a few sports nutrition supplements. I was doing online sales with them and doing really well, but it was difficult to get the product into stores. So I started looking into developing a product in sports nutrition that would have easier access into stores. My family owns springs in Michigan, California and Alaska, so I had access to my own water points. So me and my brother, we said, “Hey, let’s start a bottled water company.” I already owned the Plus brand, and we wanted to deliver a superior water product. People loved it, and sales were great online. I decided to stop doing the sports nutrition and put all my attention into beverages.
PG: And that’s when you came up with Agua Plus?
CW: Yeah, I met with a couple of big development companies. One is called Power Brands US. I met with them to create an alkalinity formula that had a really good flavor. So I spent about six weeks with them, and we did test groups. Once we had our flavoring and formula perfected, you have to go through a computer analysis stage where it gives you an exact computer code of elements, so that you can mimic those elements over and over again, especially if you plan on growing and going national and bottling at multiple companies, because it has to pull elements out and add elements in to create the water. So that’s how we created the flavor and the formula for Agua Plus.
PG: What is All-Scratch Technology, and how did that come about?
CW: Well, the problem of confusion with bottles, whether at a restaurant, a bar or at home, has been going on for a long time. In any type of group setting, people confuse their bottles. It just happens over and over again. One time, I had a family reunion, and in the morning, I was watching people throw out bottles that were full. So me and my brother drove to Office Depot. We bought colored stickers and assigned each person a color, or wrote their initials on the stickers, so people would know which bottle was theirs. Eventually, me and my brother said, “There’s got to be a way that I can put a mark on this bottle so everyone knows which bottle is theirs.” We pulled a lot of patents, looked at a lot of things. We went to different companies, looking for a way to create a new chemical composition so that you could scratch in a name, but it would also be waterproof, can handle the sun, can get cold, not flake off. It’s a combination of about 13 different layers and a lot of different chemicals. We had to make sure the chemicals were biodegradable, not hazardous to humans or children. It was about two and a half years of work.