Sarasota water bottle company wins over social media influencer

The question Rebecca Dawson is asked the most, nine months into running her startup water bottle business, WellHouse, is frustratingly simple: where can I get it?

Frustrating because she wants supply of the company’s bottles of spring water to meet the bubbling demand, and interest. That makes distribution and availability the No. 1 goal in 2026 for the Sarasota-based company, which is run by Dawson and her husband, Chad Dawson. “Next year I want to be in some grocery stores,” Rebecca says in a late 2025 interview. “I want to be on some shelves.” 

Even as the Dawsons chase that goal, interest in WellHouse is primed to grow in the short-term, as the startup recently connected with RossCreations, a wildly-popular social media influencer and prankster among the GenZ demographic. His real name is Charles Ross and, in addition to being from Sarasota, where he stages some of his pranks, he has nearly eight million followers on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. Ross, says Rebecca, uses glass bottles for his daily water consumption and he now offers a link with a WellHouse discount for his audience on his platforms. "We are excited to work together with Ross and we are thrilled he likes our products," Rebecca says. 

WellHouse Water is already on some shelves in the Sarasota area, mostly locally-owned businesses like the Pinecraft Ice Cream Shop & Emma’s Pizza, Crop, Main Street Creamery, Yoder’s Pie Craft Coffee and a few others. WellHouse offers a delivery service in tiered-price points, and it has a few wholesale clients outside the area, including one in Miami. One more place customers can buy the water? The Sarasota Farmers Market. “We are growing every week, which is really exciting,” Rebecca says. 

WellHouse scored a big win in July, three months after launching, when it signed a deal with Sarasota-based Gold Coast Eagle, the Anheuser-Busch distributor for Sarasota and Manatee counties. That will get the brand not only more notoriety, says Rebecca, but into more people’s hands. “We can now be in more hotels, more restaurants, more Airbnbs,” she says.

And in the chase for more distribution deals, and more shelf space, the Dawsons, in addition to the product, have another calling card: a relentless spirit. “‘No’ does not stop me,” Rebecca says. “It would be easy to just go work for someone else, but I am determined to keep going.” 

Adds Chad: “No doesn’t mean no forever. No means we will try again next week.”

The Dawsons founded the company to solve several needs. On a high-level, Rebecca says she often seeks health and wellness options for her family, which includes two young adult sons and one teenage son. And good clean water options is something she’s long focused on, even when she had a full-time job as a counselor. On a more practical level, when Chad was laid off from his medical device sales job in 2022, that motivated Rebecca to chase her entrepreneurial dreams.

But the water market isn’t a cinch. She needed a source for the water, and quickly discovered while it was a low barrier to entry market cost-wise, there was a higher barrier to finding partners and vendors. “Water is a huge market, but not a lot of competitors want you to enter that market,” Rebecca said in an interview this past summer. 

Glass bottles made a big difference, the Dawsons say, in cutting through that noise. It’s the least reactive material, and also helps create a template for a shinier, glossier and more luxurious designer look. The company has a water sourcing deal with a supplier in Bear Hollow Springs near Lake Placid in central Florida. The source has alkaline spring water with natural electrolytes, the company says on its website, which has a higher pH level. And the water composition, the company adds, is “similar or exceeds that of other premium brands.”

The bottles come from vendors outside Florida, but it’s all assembled in Sarasota. Its 16-ounce bottle is its signature size, which retails for $5 on wellhousewater.com. The company also offers a smaller 12-ounce size ($3.50) plus a 25-ounce bottle ($5.50) and one-gallon glass jug ($15). The water is regularly tested, has a pH level of 6.9 (7 is considered pure) and contains natural minerals like magnesium, calcium and sodium. “There’s just something really special to people about it being from here,” Rebecca says customers often tell her. 

Another part of the WellHouse brand the Dawsons believe is special is its nonprofit arm, Reservoir. The goal with that entity, the couple says, is to provide free BPA-free plastics and sustainable glass wherever possible at community events like 5Ks, after school programs, church events and for disaster relief. 

In considering WellHouse overall going into 2026, the Dawsons, while aligned on their goals, have something of divergent mindsets. That middle ground is a challenge many fast-growth startup businesses face: having the capacity, in a cost-efficient way, to satisfy growing demand without skimping on quality or customer service. 

“Talking about growth is so exciting,” Rebecca says. “I can’t wait to blast through everything.” 

Chad quickly adds: “I’m thinking about all the things that we have to do to handle the growth.”