Andy Rieger & Ryan Maybee

Andy Rieger and Ryan Maybee are the partners who in 2014 revived J. Rieger & Co. — bringing back a Kansas City whiskey house founded in 1887 and shuttered by Prohibition, and opening the city’s first distillery since Prohibition.

Biography

J. Rieger & Co. was founded by Jacob Rieger in 1887 in Kansas City’s West Bottoms. Under his son Alexander Rieger, who took over around 1900, it grew into the largest mail-order whiskey house in the country — reaching hundreds of thousands of customers — before Prohibition ended its operations in 1919.¹²

The revival began with Ryan Maybee, a Kansas City hospitality entrepreneur behind the award-winning basement bar Manifesto and co-owner of The Rieger restaurant, both housed in the historic Rieger Hotel building. Fascinated by the building’s connection to the pre-Prohibition distillery, Maybee set out to restore its legacy.² He partnered with Andy Rieger — Jacob Rieger’s great-great-great-grandson, who left a career in private equity and investment banking and returned to Kansas City to resurrect the family business.¹³

The pair formally relaunched J. Rieger & Co. in October 2014, with early production support from master distiller Dave Pickerell; former Tanqueray master distiller Tom Nichol joined in 2015 to develop the company’s Midwestern Dry Gin.² In 2019 the company opened a large new distillery and visitor experience in the restored 1901 Heim Brewery bottling house in the East Bottoms, debuting July 12, 2019.⁴

Legacy

Rieger and Maybee turned a forgotten piece of Kansas City history into a thriving modern distillery, anchoring the city’s craft-spirits revival and adaptively reusing two landmark buildings in the process.

See also

• j-rieger-and-co

Sources

Footnotes

1. “J. Rieger & Co.,” Wikipedia — founded 1887 by Jacob Rieger; mail-order peak under son Alexander; revived 2014 by Andy Rieger (great-great-great-grandson) and Ryan Maybee; KC’s first distillery since Prohibition. ↩ ↩²

2. J. Rieger & Co. official history (jriegerco.com/history) — Maybee (Manifesto, The Rieger); Andy Rieger’s PE/banking background and 2014 return; relaunch October 2014; Dave Pickerell (2014) and Tom Nichol (2015). ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. “Life & Work with Andy Rieger of Kansas City,” VoyageKC — SMU math/finance; ~4 years private equity / investment banking in Dallas before returning to KC. ↩

4. “J. Rieger & Co.’s Massive New Distillery Opens in Kansas City’s East Bottoms,” Feast Magazine (2019-07-12) — 1901 Heim Brewery bottling house conversion; grand opening July 12, 2019. ↩