Fred

The Accidental Locavore first met Fred at Murray’s Cheese in Grand Central Station. In a movie or sitcom it would be considered “meeting cute” as a woman in a hurry breezes into Murray’s for a couple of cheeses for an upcoming dinner party (yes, I’m still buying cheese), but being desperately thirsty, I stopped to get a bottle of water and there was Fred. Good-looking in a transparent way, Fred was nestled between feta from several countries and yogurt from several others. You see, Fred is a bottled water.

What makes Fred different from all your other grab-and-go bottled water is the shape of the bottle. It’s essentially flat, like a flask, but still manages to pack a surprising 20 ounces of water into what they call a “pocket-friendly bottle.” On top of that, Fred is refillable, so when you’re empty you won’t feel guilty (for tossing another bottle or refilling a non-refillable one), and the water, from the Catskills (kudos for local water), tastes just fine.

Someone saw the bottle sitting on our counter, and asked what it was (probably thinking it was another one of our weird bottles of booze like Root or Snap—don’t ask!), and said I should write about it. Because things happen for a reason, when I started this piece and went to their website, I discovered that they’re running a Kickstarter campaign to launch their new stainless flasks. Normally, I’d just stick to the plastic bottle, which works just fine, but since my husband’s name starts with an F, I thought it would be a fun gift for him (and now we’ll see how closely he reads this) and became a backer. Since they’ve already well-exceed their goal if you want in, you can choose from a bunch of different colors (sorry, only F as an initial) and we’ll all get our bottles a little sooner.

My only quibble with the bottles–that they’re “pocket-friendly”–probably should be more directed to the makers of womens’ clothing, but I sincerely doubt that there is a single pocket in anything I own that would fit this bottle. I guess that’s why I carry an enormous handbag…

The photo of the stainless Fred bottle is taken from their Kickstarter page–thanks!