Purified water brand Richard’s Rainwater is setting its sustainability sights on reducing its carbon footprint with a network of geographically strategic facilities for collection, production and distribution with the announcement that it has built the world’s largest potable rainwater collection site in Louisiana.
The Dripping Springs, Texas-based brand has partnered with Faubourg Brewery in New Orleans on the collection site that is expected to produce 2 million gallons of purified rainwater and be bottled onsite at Faubourg’s existing production facility.
Richard’s Rainwater quietly closed a Series A funding round last March. The company would not disclose the exact investment number but CEO Taylor O’Neil confirmed that it was “eight figures” with participation from fellow Texas-based investment firm Valedor Partners. Previously, the company had raised about $19.5 million.
The capital infusion helps the brand scale its production with projects like the Faubourg collection site. Richard’s funds the building of the infrastructure that collects, treats and connects to the existing manufacturing facility, and the company then uses Faubourg as a co-packer of its glass and aluminum bottles.
“There’s certainly always a financial reality to the partnership,” O’Neil said.
But the partnership goes beyond just the economic incentives and fits into the sustainability vision that has always been a core principle for the brand. Founded in 2002 by Richard Heinichen, the company was the first company in the U.S. to receive regulatory approval to capture, purify and bottle rainwater for retail. Eventually, the brand was acquired by O’Neil along with former hedge fund manager Steve Kuhn.
While many bottled water companies are focused on telling the story of the freshness of their products or offsetting plastic usage, Richard’s Rainwater – which uses only glass bottles and aluminum cans – has focused its attention on building out this collection site network to better serve its customers while limiting shipping distances, furthering the sustainability goals of the brand.
“The system that we’ve designed that goes into Faubourg could work at really any bottling plant in the country,” O’Neil said.
Richard’s Rainwater hopes that it can use the new partnership with Faubourg Brewery – and the brewery’s parent company, Made By The Water, LLC – to pitch its vision to other breweries, bottlers and co-packers.
Richard’s existing collection of sites includes neighboring Mississippi, at Lazy Magnolia Brewing, and its original collection location – Tank Town in Austin, Texas. New Orleans’ proximity to the other two sites helps expand capacity in its home region of Texas and the southeast as the brand pushes towards a broader national presence.
The brand is “in discussion with additional collection sites in the Pacific Northwest and on the East Coast” that are expecting to close in 2023 or 2024, O’Neil said.
Most of the brand’s retail opportunities have come from the natural channel thus far. The brand is in Whole Foods nationwide and sports a good foothold in its home market with select Albertsons, Kroger, H.E.B and Central Market stores in Texas and the southeast.
Richard’s is both trying to build on the success of the brand in existing natural retail channels, O’Neil said, while trying to gain more presence in conventional grocery and foodservice. The brand is partnered with a DSD beer distributor in Texas to service regional foodservice customers and has a national partnership with Alamo Drafthouse locations.
Other than a small, limited trial in the convenience channel in the Austin area, O’Neil said the real opportunity is in the natural channel and “continuing to build density in our ACV in markets where the brand is seeing consumer engagement and adoption.”
O’Neil said there are the occasional single cans or bottles sold in the cold box or on shelf, but they are most competitive in the 12-pack formats sold for around $14 in conventional and natural retailers.
Presently, the company isn’t putting too much thought into a future where Richard’s Rainwater is making flavored sparkling varieties or the product is being used in other beverage applications.
The brand is satisfied with its slim portfolio of still and sparkling water, O’Neil said, “but when you think about the future of the canned water market on the sell side, we’ve got a long and huge opportunity in the existing SKUs that I think you’ll see us stay pretty focused on that for the next little bit.