Ryan Emmons

“I was always fascinated by water,” says Ryan Emmons, 27. As a student at the University of Southern California, he got the idea for bottling the precious resource in an eco-friendly way while he was visiting his mother’s family in Hawaii. One day he was struck by the “amazing” taste of natural spring water from his uncle’s well.

Emmons, a Santa Barbara native who surfs and reveres the great outdoors, came up with an environmentally responsible, socially conscious, and youth-oriented spin for a business model: “Carbon neutral Fiji Water but with the lifestyle brand of Red Bull,” he says.

Waiākea Hawaiian Volcanic Water debuted commercially in 2012 and is now in 5,000 stores across the country. For every liter sold, a week’s supply of clean water is donated to water-starved regions of Malawi. The amount, based off per capita consumption, goes to communities in need through Pump Aid, Emmons’ charity partner. To date, 500 million liters have been channeled to rural regions, he says, through digging wells and building and maintaining pumps.

Waiākea water, from rain and snowmelt, is tapped on Hawaii’s Big Island. No one can own water rights in Hawaii, but he was able to lease the source for 99 years and describes how it’s filtered through porous volcanic rock, becoming rich with electrolytes, alkaline, and minerals like potassium, magnesium, calcium, and silica.

Emmons and his co-founder, Matt Meyer, did market research and used their savings, as well as money from family and friends, to help finance the operation.

“Our families thought it was a pipe dream at first,” Emmons says, adding that he had no food and beverage industry experience at the time nor any useful networking contacts. “I learned a lot every single year, almost an accelerated MBA in itself.”

In studying packaging options, rPET bottles manufactured from post-consumer recycled plastic seemed to produce the lowest emissions for shipping. That choice led to Waiākea being named one of the first premium bottled waters in the world to be certified CarbonNeutral.

“Glass is great,” Emmons says, “but you have to worry about the cleaning solvents used, and people don’t realize how much that weight affects your carbon footprint in terms of travel.”

Post-college, he moved into a “tiny” house in Los Angeles with six friends who all helped build the enterprise. They took stipends and stock options in lieu of salary, he explains.

“We’d go buy our food for the entire team at Costco and ration it out,” he recounts of how they survived from week to week. Initially, they self-distributed Waiākea water by renting U-Haul trucks. Accounts at specialty food stores in California and Hawaii came quickly. Soon, they could afford a professional distributor.

“The water texture has a soft mouth feel,” he says, “with a subtle hint of sweetness in the aftertaste. It’s so good, it sells itself.”

And now he can afford to have just one roommate: his girlfriend.

Highlights

2011: Ryan Emmons has an epiphany when he tasted the water from his uncle’s well in Hawaii.

2012: Launches Waiākea Hawaiian Volcanic Water  in Los Angeles; partners with Pump Aid to help provide clean water to disadvantaged regions of Malawi; graduates from USC.

2015: Waiākea wins a Best in Biz Award for most socially responsible company in North America.

2016: Ranked #8 Disruptor of Beverage Industry by Beverage World Magazine.

2017: Ranked #414 on the Inc. 5000 List for fastest growing companies in America.