Why Would Anyone Pay for a Can of Portland Water?

Someone has started selling a product called “Portland Water” that comes in a beer-style can and has the PDX airport carpet pattern as its label. (And yes, it’s just plain water.) I have a lot of questions, frankly, but why don’t we start with, “Why would anyone pay $3 for this when it comes out of the tap essentially for free?” —Dismayed

I too have questions, Dismayed. (“Can anyone doubt that the End Times are upon us?” springs to mind.) I’m skeptical of bottled water in general—it seems not unlike lugging a car battery home from Safeway and plugging your refrigerator into that instead of the wall—but I acknowledge that that ship has sailed. Still, it takes chutzpah to build a brand identity for literally the same stuff everyone already has tons of—it’s like trying to convince me to buy a product called “Marty’s Poop.”

Maybe we’re not the target market? With points of sale that include hotels, Made in Oregon stores and Portland International Airport, perhaps Portland Water, like Voodoo Doughnut, is mostly for tourists. Then again, it’s also in stores and restaurants that don’t cater specifically to out-of-towners, so maybe not.

This isn’t the first time Portland’s tap water has gone commercial: As I reported nine (!) years ago, in 1984, Mayor Frank Ivancie promulgated something called Bull Run Portland Sparkling Water. This was made available in bottles at that year’s World’s Fair in New Orleans, among other places. Businesses would notice how great Portland’s municipal water supply was (the theory went) and be wowed into relocating to a city that was just starting to tout its “livable” qualities.

The new Portland Water could make a similar splash, except for one problem: Portland Water isn’t actually Portland water. Unlike Ivancie’s elixir, which was self-consciously from the watershed that makes Portland’s city water legendary (or at least unique), Portland Water comes from an underground aquifer in Central Oregon. Not only is it not from Bull Run, it’s not from a watershed at all. It’s groundwater. It even has groundwater’s naturally occurring fluoride (which, to be clear, is totally fine, but you have to admit it’s not exactly on-brand).

Then again, it’s precisely this difference that keeps Portland Water from being the same old boring stuff we get from the tap. Whether that will differentiate the product enough for it to catch on remains to be seen—but it should make it at least as interesting as someone ELSE’S poop.

Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.