Don't like coffee or soda but crave the kick of caffeine?
Water Joe may be for you.A bottle of Water Joe is almost 17 ounces of artesian well water with the same amount of caffeine as 8 ounces of coffee, its makers say. It sells for about 99 cents in about 20 states and tastes just like water.
"We've taken all the bad stuff out of coffee and cola," said Christopher Connor, co-owner of Water Joe.
Connor's partner, David Marcheschi, developed the idea when he was a student at Arizona State University in the late 1980s.
"I didn't like coffee or cola but needed to stay awake to help study. I drank a lot of water, and I thought it would be kind of obvious," said Marcheschi, 29.
Six years later, he found a chemist who figured out how to take the bitterness out of caffeine. It took Marcheschi another two years to find a company that would take a risk on an untested mortgage broker with an untried product.
"It was like `if this idea meant anything, someone else would have thought of it,' " said Connor, 35, a Chicago representative for furniture makers.
Water Joe debuted last fall in Milwaukee and Chicago.
Production has increased from 50,000 bottles a week to 300,000, and Connor and Marcheschi hope to have it in all 50 states by Labor Day.
The water has really caught on at the Chicago Board of Trade, where the pace is fast and furious and no beverages except water are allowed on the trading floor.
Dan Jeffrey, a clerk at the board, drinks Water Joe every morning and prefers it to coffee or soda.
"It goes down quicker," Jeffrey said.
Water Joe won't challenge the soft drink giants, but it could become a good alternative, said Greg Prince, editor of Beverage World Periscope, a trade magazine based in Great Neck, N.Y.