It was just a year or so after her 2013 graduation that University of Virginia alumna Megan Riggs thought she had it all.
She was living in Los Angeles, working for a global company, “doing really well from the outside looking in. I was making a lot of money,” she recalled.
But then, out of nowhere, she became racked with depression and anxiety. She slept all the time. She couldn’t see a path forward. And she couldn’t see the point of going on.
“And it reached a point of, you know, just reaching the edge of wanting to end my life,” Riggs said.
She sold everything she owned. She jammed a couple of outfits into a backpack and bought a one-way ticket to Thailand without any plans for what to do next.
Crunchy Hydration is the result of Riggs’ experimentation with infusing a sparkling water with the kinds of natural ingredients and supplements that helped her regain her focus during a difficult chapter in her life. (Photo by Kristen Zeis)
“It was a classic millennial thing,” she said. “It was a hard, drastic reset.”
Fast forward to 2025, and Riggs is the founder of Crunchy Hydration, a sparkling wellness water available in major grocery stores across the country – including Thrive Market, Food Lion, Wegmans and Whole Foods, as well as hundreds of smaller stores – and on track to reach $1 million in sales this year.
Riggs says she and her team have created a half dozen all-natural formulas and flavors with clean ingredients scientifically backed to support mental clarity, stress reduction and overall wellness. Some flavors support relaxation while others deliver amped-up energy. The slightly bubbly concoctions are generating a buzz in the beverage industry, and it all goes back to her year of subsistence living in Thailand.
‘This is what I was meant to do’
In Thailand, she got a job teaching English at an orphanage. On her way to work each day, she stopped by a juice shop.
Crunchy Hydration is available in national grocery chains as well as hundreds of smaller stores, a significant leap from the early days when Riggs promoted it largely through social media. (Photo by Kristen Zeis)
“I remember calling my sister and saying, ‘This is what I was meant to do. I’m going to open a juice shop,’” she recalled.
Things just seemed so much simpler in the Thai Islands, including the juice. It wasn’t laden with unpronounceable chemicals. It was just juice and natural ingredients that made her feel better.
After a year, she returned to her hometown of Virginia Beach and began experimenting with a commercial juicer and carrots. The original mixture was a little pulpy – or crunchy – which gave rise to the name, “Crunchy Carrot.”
As she grew her juice business, Riggs spent hours talking with customers about their wellness goals and mental health. She often found herself sharing her own experiences and how natural supplements, such as L-theanine and adaptogens – or natural substances that promote wellness – had helped her manage stress and regain focus. The conversations, Riggs said, sparked a realization: While fresh juice was nourishing, a short shelf life and pasteurization challenges meant scaling a juice product would be difficult and expensive.
A wellness water, on the other hand, could more easily be brought to market. In her kitchen, she experimented with “mad scientist” formulations. A local brewery let her use its production and canning facilities.
Even though the carrot crunchiness didn’t make the cut, she still loved the Crunchy Carrot name, so she called the new product “Crunchy Hydration.” It’s a moniker, she admits, that has stirred some confusion.
