Mountain Valley Spring Co.*

When the young doctors on ABC’s hit medical series “Grey’s Anatomy” slug down Mountain Valley Spring Water, as they do in almost every episode, a 19th century commodity is finding its 21st century market.

“The characters love them some Mountain Valley,” brags Jim Karrh, the company’s chief marketing officer.

Mountain Valley Spring Water is the flagship brand of a company that was founded in 1871. It has a storied history, including establishing one of the first franchises in American business in 1894 and becoming the first bottled water brand that was available coast to coast by 1920. But it remains a small player in an $11 billion industry dominated by giants like Nestlé and Coca-Cola.

Breck Speed, with financial backing from Johnelle Hunt, owned Clear Mountain Spring Water in Little Rock. In 2004, with more investment by J.B. Hunt, he bought Mountain Valley and returned the company to Arkansas ownership for the first time in more than a century. The Mountain Valley family includes Mountain Valley Spring Water, Clear Mountain Spring Water and Veriplas Containers, a plastic bottle manufacturer in Little Rock and Hot Springs.

Mountain Valley, which comes from a single spring near Hot Springs, is the company’s premium brand. It competes with the likes of San Pellegrino, Perrier and Fiji in such upscale retailers as Whole Foods and Ted Turner’s Ted’s Montana Grill restaurants. Clear Mountain is drawn from several springs and is bottled for home and office delivery.

Mountain Valley’s glass bottles were named “best of show” by the International Bottled Water Association in 2006, and the company introduced a Mountain Valley brand of coffee last year.

The company enjoyed double-digit growth in 2006, Karrh said, “and we’re looking for even bigger things this year and beyond.”