Editor’s Note:
If you’re new here, welcome. RITUALS is a space for origin stories, lived experience and the ideas shaping Alternative Options™ as it evolves. This piece traces where it all began - not as a wellness project, but as a response to real life inside music, culture and community. Take what resonates. Leave the rest. You’re in the right place.
Alternative Options™ began by merging two worlds.
Two projects.
Two identities.
One shared realization that something needed to change.
Let’s start at the very beginning.
Kittie began when sisters Morgan and Mercedes Lander were still kids.
Teenage girls stepping into a world dominated by grown men. Touring internationally before most people know who they are, let alone who they’re becoming. Living on buses. Navigating contracts, power dynamics, expectation, objectification and pressure - all while trying to simply play music and survive adolescence in public.
What Kittie accomplished is undeniable. They broke barriers. They became a reference point for heavy music and for women who rarely saw themselves represented onstage.
But that level of success came at a cost.
An industry that rewards endurance teaches you to normalize exhaustion. To push through discomfort. To treat excess as proof you belong. As apart of the currency. Part of the bonding. Part of survival.
Then there was We Are PIGS.
Founded by Grammy-featured producer / entrepreneur Esjay Jones, We Are PIGS began by reaching out to friends - artists and creators who had lived inside the industry long enough to understand its contradictions.
People in the public eye who didn’t need another project, but wanted a place where they could be honest.
That became the calling card.
The fact that people said yes wasn’t about hype. It was about trust. About safety. About creating an environment where people could show up unfiltered, without performance or self-protection.
We Are PIGS became a space to question what no longer served us.
To confront excess, burnout and consumption.
To name what we normalize simply because “that’s how it’s always been.”
It wasn’t about tearing anything down.
It was about influence.
Using voice and visibility to say: this doesn’t work anymore - and we deserve to build something better.
Better for our bodies.
Better for our minds.
Better for our communities.
In 2020, those two worlds collided with a friendship and a musical collaboration.
That collision became KittiePIG, INC In 2025.
It wasn’t a brand decision.
It was a reckoning.
After decades of intensity, pressure and celebration, something had to evolve - not away from who we were, but toward something that could actually sustain us.
This became our first offering to the non-alcoholic world.
Not as a wellness brand.
Not as a moral stance.
As an experiment.
What would it look like to bring the credibility and emotional honesty of heavy music into a space that lacked it?
What would it feel like to hold a beer that still felt like you - without alcohol?
That question became Brütal Bërry.
We didn’t start KittiePIG, INC because we decided alcohol was bad.
It came from lived experience.
Over 25 years in the music industry. Touring. Festivals. Late nights. Early call times. A culture where celebration almost always revolved around drinking.
Until it didn’t work anymore.
Alcohol stopped adding to the experience.
It started taking from it.
Brütal Bërry was never about abstinence.
It was about intention.
About mindful drinking.
About moderation.
About having an option that didn’t cost you the next day.
Something you could hold in your hand and still feel like you belonged.
What started as a wild dream, quickly became tangible.
KittiePIG “Brütal Bërry” landed in over 50 stores across the US. Successfully launched on Amazon. Sold out three times in one year and teamed up with promoter giant Danny Wimmer Presents InkCarceration Festival in Ohio.
Watching 80 000 heavy music fans view our ads on the big screen, buy a can, take a sip, read the label, take a sip - and immediately get it - changed everything.
It made us ask a bigger question.
Because when you’re at a festival all day…
On the road…
Training…
Working long hours…
Hydration matters.
Recovery matters.
Mental clarity matters.
So we started thinking beyond replacement.
What about Functional hydration?
What about Electrolytes? Collegen? Protein?
Ingredients like ginseng that support energy instead of depleting it? Products that we love (like Gummy Bears!) that have less sugar? Sustainable and responsibly sourced products that we are would be proud to be apart of.
Why did every “better-for-you” product look like it was designed for someone else?
We wanted something that felt like us.
Heavy.
Intentional.
Unapologetic.
Products that represented who we are … not who wellness culture expects us to be.
That’s how we evolved into ALTERNATIVE OPTIONS WELLNESS.
From one non-alcoholic beer into a broader vision of better-for-you options and streetwear.
Built for real life.
Built for people who live outside the default.
Because our community deserves better.
We deserve options that support how we live, move and create.
This has never been about not drinking.
It’s about mindful drinking.
Moderation.
Intention.
Our fans show up fully.
So should we.
KittiePIG, inc was the beginning.
Alternative Options™ is now.
One idea.
Many evolutions.
Always rooted in culture, community and choice.
Wellness, but make it Heavy™
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