Bottler aims to be 'Sip of the South'
Owners use hurricanes to increase product profile with helping people

- By Connie Baggett, Staff Reporter

CHRYSLER, Ala. -- Fourteen years ago, David Forbes looked at the white sand that well drillers had pulled up from hundreds of feet beneath the lush green countryside of Monroe County.

He said he new then he had found something special, something marketable: pristine water from a deep aquifer. Millions of dollars and expensive lessons in marketing later, Mineola Water seems to be catching on, with 500 stores carrying the product in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Florida.

"The real reason I got into this -- five years ago I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes," Forbes said. "I had been traveling extensively around the U.S., and because of the diabetes, I had to drink large amounts of water.

"One day, I bought a bottle for $1.29 and, though I usually didn't read the labels, I looked at this one. It said 'municipal water' was the source. When my wife and I came home, I knew there had to be a place in the market for deep aquifer water, and I knew where a great source was."

Forbes, 50, said he worked as a farmer for a while, then in the early 1990s, he worked with a heating/air-conditioning company that tapped into geothermal wells for heating and cooling homes. It was during a drill in the Chrysler area that working found the sand deep in the earth that filters the water in the aquifer.

After studying U.S. Geological Survey maps, Forbes -- now chief operations officer and head of distribution -- and a few other founders began looking for land for their bottling plant.

"We knew if we could get the rights," Forbes said, "we would not need to filter this water. It is 99.6 percent pure. The other 0.4 percent is trace minerals that give it its unique taste."

The new partners spent millions building the plant and then millions more trying to break into a market Forbes said he found to be cutthroat.

"In some aspects -- marketing is one -- we were naive." Forbes said. "We have a source among the top 3 percent in the country as far as purity. We knew for sure when we got our water samples back from testing."

He said we was shocked at the way shelf space sometimes goes to the highest bidder in the industry.

"None of us has a grocery distribution background," he said.

Forbes said the partners were all passionate about what was in the bottle, but soon found consumer outlet managers "all wanted to know how much we would pay to let them put our water on their shelves."

The first bottles got filled in early 2003. For several months, Mineola rat its operation and premiered the product in Atlanta. Soon, however, the partnership faltered as some disagreed on what direction the company should take.

Forbes and others bought out opposition partners in the company and by March 2004 were in full production and distribution. Finding stores that would take the product was still difficult, Forbes said.

III wind blows some good

Then came the active hurricane season last summer.

"Hurricane Frances hit and we shipped thousands of gallons to Florida," Forbes said. More storms hit, and Wal-Marts were completely out of water with no suppliers able to deliver. Many were idled because municipal water sources shut down because of contamination from storms.

Production in the wake of recent storms had workers pushing to the limit. But this time, Mineola had a distribution plan worked out ahead of time.

Forbes said he and the 20 employees at Mineola worked round the clock to ship semi-load after semi-load to the hardest-hit areas after storms in 2004. Mineola donated case after case to relief efforts locally and in Florida, he said.

"People started calling us to thank us for bringing the water and telling us they loved the taste," Forbes said. "And after Ivan hit, we learned a lesson, too. We developed a program we call Source 1. Those (Source 1 stores) are the places that stock emergency supplies , and those are the places we will service first as water depots.

"Last season was a wake-up call. Now we have a half-million gallons ready to ship should another storm threaten. And the Source 1 stores can only charge $1 a gallon. Most charge only 88 cents."

Forbes said Mineola, which has corporate headquarters in Foley in Baldwin County, can be found in many Winn-Dixie stores, many Wal-Marts and at Groovin Noovin's convenience stores, among other outlets.

"We stock Mineola," said Vincent Petrie, grocery manager at Wal-Mart Supercenter on Schillinger Road in Mobile. "They helped us out in the hurricane, and they've been here ever since."

Petrie said the store currently carries only the gallon containers of Mineola, but will soon add smaller bottles.

"It's slowly catching on," Petrie said. "It's still new, but growing."

The Monroe County plant can produce up to 50,000 gallons a day of finished product and can keep operating when power lines fail or surface water sources are contaminated, Forbes said. The plant will expand in the fall with a second 40,000-square-foot building, then again in 2007 with a 100,000-square-foot addition.

Mineola buys locally made boxes and bottles when possible and allows the bottles to fully "cure" on site for weeks so there is no plastic taste in the water. Then there is testing. Water monitoring around the wells is constant, Forbes said. Water is tested before it's bottled, then several bottles daily are tested afterward to ensure quality.

Marketing includes a new slogan

Marketing is coming along, he said. The bottle has a new design and label, and a new slogan -- "Sip of the South" -- will find its way onto bottles and T-shirts soon. Mineola bought advertising with Clear Channel television and will be on hand at air shows featuring the U.S. Navy Blue Angels precision flying team this summer.

"I want to see Mineola a household word," Forbes said. "Our mission statement is, 'To provide the best quality water at a reasonable price,' and I think we are doing that. We promote using this water for your coffee, with other products like tea just to compare to what you have been using. You won't believe the difference. We are coming out with a new product in the fall, too."

"It all boils down to natural water versus tap water. Call it what it is," Forbes said. "We've got more than 500 stores carrying Mineola now. We want people to give Mineola a try. They'll want more."