The first time I ever heard of Ranch Water tequila-inspired seltzer was when Music Spotlight artist, Jenna Paulette, promoted it. Hard seltzers have become a thing and many of the beverage companies have their version of it. By 2021, more and more of my country music pals were talking about Ranch Water.
A few months ago, I was invited to a Ranch Water launch party for their Lone River Yellowstone Limited Edition Ranch Pack. Besides featuring CMA Artist of the Year, Lainey Wilson, and Spotlight artists, Ian Munsick and Jake Worthington were also there to perform.
When Lainey Wilson was recruited to star in the hit TV show Yellowstone, she was the perfect person to represent Ranch Water when they brought a taste of Texas to Music City.
Of course, they served Ranch Water seltzer as the beverage. It was good, really good and I wondered why it tasted so much better than other brands. I got to sit down with company owner, Katie Beal Brown to hear the story of how she launched a successful company during the height of the COVID pandemic.
Ranch Water is named after a real West Texas-born cocktail that was turned into turned canned, malt-based seltzer in 2019. By 2020, it became a multi-million-dollar company and now is found in chain grocery and convenience stores all over the country.
The legend behind Ranch Water is that the original cocktail hails from Far West Texas and was originally concocted in the 1960s by a wild-haired rancher near Fort Davis, Texas, which is the same spot as Beal-Brown’s family ranch.
Beal Brown is a fourth-generation Texan and Southern Methodist University graduate. She grew up in a small town in West Texas on a ranch that has been in her family for more than 100 years. Upon graduation from college, she and her husband moved to New York City where they worked in advertising.
“That was my first time being really far from home,” she confessed.
They came up with a concept for the brand that started in the Lone River region of Texas because they wanted to celebrate the lifestyle that it represents and where the ranch water beverage comes from.
It took her nearly five years to impact the market the way they knew it needed. In February 2020, a month before the famous COVID lockdown, Beal-Brown quit her marketing job in New York City to sell her Ranch Water full-time.
She explained, “I just could have never seen what was coming for us, you know both in a good and a challenging way because there were so many things that we had to overcome just from all the disruptions that happened during COVID to our supply chain. But then there was also growth that we could have never expected in how many people were willing to try our product because of how much the world changed when we launched.”
Besides being tequila-based as opposed to vodka-based as many others are, Ranch Water was the first to use real juice, not a lab-created flavoring. Besides alcohol, they use organic agave nectar and real key lime juice as the main ingredients.
In addition to their staple, Ranch Water, they now offer Ranch Rita’s, which are a bit sweeter than the original product but made with the same quality ingredients.
Teaming up with country music stars is a natural fit for their product. Most recently they have recruited Miranda Lambert as a spokesperson for their product.
“We’ve genuinely connected with the artists. It’s more like a relationship than a business partnership,” she stated.
And just like me, Beal Brown has gotten so much fulfillment from being able to connect and give a platform to the up-and-coming artists who believe in her brand. “I resonate with their journey,” she confirmed.
Beal Brown connects to the lyrics of country music in much the same way the rest of us do. She related to Lainey Wilson’s first mega-hit “Things a Man Oughta’ Know.”
She stated, “I connected with that song because I feel like that was the way I was raised. My dad and my grandfather never treated me like I was a girl or a boy. They just took me along for every single thing that they were doing, and they expected me to be able to hang with them, to learn it.
The way Beal Brown was reared contributes to the success of her company. She surrounds herself with the kind of can-do people that are required to make it in the corporate world. She takes no excuses, nor does she give any. That is why the Lone River Beverage Company is so successful. Ranch Water is here to stay.
You can follow the Lone River Beverage Company on their website, Instagram, Facebook, and X(Twitter).
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Bethany Bowman is a freelance entertainment writer. You can follow her blog, Instagram, Threads, and X (Twitter).