In just 48 hours, Lucy and Andy Rieger ’09 pivoted J. Rieger & Co. – their family distillery in Kansas City, Missouri – from producing whiskey to making hand sanitizer for hospitals, nursing homes and the community.
The distillery is making sanitizer in two-liter bottles by the pallet these days, working to keep up with the requests pouring in. “I’ve been getting about 500 a day.”
Rieger said it started on a much smaller scale with a request from a nursing facility and a small offering to the public, but the demand was huge.
“It felt for a while there like I was playing God,” Rieger said. “People calling, saying, ‘I have nowhere else to turn; can you help us?’”
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