Defiance is nothing new to Kansans. Some prognosticators suggest that the craft beer industry is drying up. However, the westward expansion of local craft breweries across the metro and into Kansas strikes a defiant stance: Hold our beer. Kansas City Bier Company, Transport Brewery, Stockyards Brewing and others have crossed the state line and opened operations in the Sunflower State.
Kansas has weathered dry spells before (ahem, Prohibition) and survived. Let’s not be that dramatic. Nationwide, the craft brewing industry boomed for more than a decade. The boom didn’t bust. Craft breweries matured, consolidated, became acquisitions or otherwise adapted to a shifting market.
Then and now, breweries are businesses. They’re also cultural havens and community gathering places. Bringing craft beer to Kansas suburbs and cities makes sense as people migrate and communities grow. With more beer made and served in Kansas, life is looking up for beer lovers.
German Beer Heritage from Waldo to the West
Kansas City Bier Company first opened its doors in Waldo in 2014. This summer KC Bier Co. opened an operation in Lenexa, expanding its brand. Interestingly, the Lenexa-based bierhalle, biergarten and brewery operates under a specific arrangement apart from the mother brewery.
“Kansas City Bier Company has no ownership in KC Bier Co. Lenexa,” says brewery founder Steve Holle. “Kansas City Bier Company has licensed its name, brands and recipes and directly oversees brewing on a fee basis for the Lenexa location.”
The agreement reflects conditions in a dynamic marketplace, as owners have positioned breweries for growth to reach people thirsty for world-class beer.
“National beer sales have contracted industrywide since the pandemic and especially for craft beer,” Holle says. “The license agreement is a way to replace lost beer sales revenue while simultaneously creating more wholesale market demand for KC Bier Co. brands through greater consumer brand exposure and retail distribution.”
Supporting local brands still matters. “Medium-size regional breweries are facing overwhelming competition from former independent craft beer brands now owned by international conglomerates,” Holle says. “These foreign companies have efficient economies of scale and more influence over their beer wholesalers.”
To keep competing takes ingenuity and forward-thinking plans.
“Lenexa gives KC Bier Co. the opportunity to create more consumer exposure and hopefully build more support for an iconic local craft beer brand,” Holle says. “Boulevard Brewing opened in 1989. In 37 years, KC Bier Co. is the only other KC-based brewery to achieve and maintain regional distribution. KC Bier Co. brews world-class beer, and we want to continue wholesale distribution of our unique German styles to KC consumers, but it has been extremely challenging to maintain market access. We hope Lenexa kickstarts growth in the wholesale market so more consumers in Missouri and Kansas can find and enjoy our beer.”
KC Bier Co. Lenexa offers a German bierhalle experience without overseas travel. Large serving tanks feed four draught towers, which each feature eight faucets that pour various German-style beers.
In other words, “Lenexa is not a boutique brewery tasting room” that serves small-batch and one-off beers, Holle says. Comparatively, a large Munich biergarten might have only two to three styles on tap. During Oktoberfest in Munich, many large tents offer only one beer in one size, a one-liter Maßkrug.
Beyond German-style beer and food, guests can also explore the German heritage exhibit. The Lenexa Historical Society approached Holle about using old photos of German immigrants who settled in Lenexa to decorate the interior.
“We were open to the local German cultural ties since we hope that the Lenexa brewery will be a gathering point for cultural events and a location to host clubs preserving Swiss, Austrian and German culture in KC,” Holle says. “German is still the largest self-reported ethnic group in the U.S. We wanted to highlight those contributions to local and national culture and achievements. We used many photos and sketches of German breweries, biergartens and hop regions that have a direct connection to KC Bier Co. since we source our malt and hops from Germany and drew inspiration from many German breweries and related industries.”
Kansas City Bier Company & KC Bier Co. Lenexa
310 W. 79th St., KCMO & 18030 W. 98th St., Lenexa
Shawnee’s Transport Brewery Expands to Gardner
Downtown Shawnee has transformed from a quiet business district into a hub of craft breweries, taprooms and restaurants. Opening in February of 2019, Transport Brewery led the charge as the city’s first craft brewery. Originally, four homebrewers connected through the Johnson County Brewing Society and later launched a small brewery and taproom next to the Aztec Theater. Transport Brewery attracted a local audience, being highly visible along Nieman Road, and helped to spur the suburb’s revival.
The owners opened a second location in Gardner in 2023. “The Gardner location not only has a fun taproom but it also has an outdoor kids’ patio, additional beer garden patio, a pizza kitchen with our pizza oven imported from Italy and a state-of-the-art 10-barrel brewhouse,” says Christie Jackson, Transport Brewery partner and operations manager.
Transport’s beers are sold on site at both locations rather than distributed to retailers or bars. Gardner’s brewhouse adds much-needed brewing capacity for large-scale production. Brewers can then focus on producing specialty craft beers on the seven-barrel system in Shawnee.
“Most of our flagship and core beers are brewed on the larger system in Gardner,” Jackson says. “Most of our barrel-aged beers, cask batches, seasonal offerings and experimental beers or pilot batches are brewed in Shawnee.”
When Transport outgrew its Shawnee space, savvy civic leaders elsewhere took notice.
“With businesses right next to us, there wasn’t a feasible place for us to expand to keep up with demand,” Jackson says. “We were one of the first businesses to open up and become successful in downtown Shawnee. Other cities saw this footprint as desirable and reached out to us to see if expansion was a possibility in hopes to get us to open up a location in their city. Gardner had a lot of great reasons for us to move south to expand. Community members really felt like the growth of their city could benefit from a locally owned microbrewery.”
Transport Brewery
1113 Johnson Drive., Shawnee & 131 E. Main St., Gardner
Stockyards Brewing Heads West From the West Bottoms
Stockyards Brewing Company first saddled up in the historic West Bottoms in 2016. The brewery and taproom occupies lounge and bar space once associated with the former Golden Ox. The treasured steakhouse initially shuttered in December 2014 and reopened under new ownership next door with a smaller footprint for dining and entertaining. Meanwhile, stained-glass windows, black-and-white photographs of the stockyards and paintings of Old West figures like Wild Bill Hickok and Buffalo Bill Cody still adorn the walls of the craft brewery and taproom.
Stockyards serves guests easy-drinking Mexican-style lager Cerveza Royale and other styles with names that reflect an upper and lower Midwest sensibility. That suits brewery owner Greg Bland, a Red Lodge, Montana, native who relocated to Kansas City just fine. Bland honors the spirit and work ethic of ranch life, cattle trails and Kansas City’s West Bottoms stockyards heritage through a modern craft brewery that operates with a similar ethos.
Bland recently struck a deal for Stockyards’ craft beer to be served on tap at the new airport’s bars. The arrangement has boosted brand name recognition and added another income stream in an increasingly crowded craft beer market, Bland says. Easing up and leaning back in the saddle means stagnation in the highly competitive beer industry.
Eager to grow, Bland spent several years scouting the metro for a promising second location. Earlier this year, he opened a second Stockyards Brewing taproom in Overland Park housed in a former Piggly Wiggly supermarket. Bland’s goals are both business-minded and community-oriented.
“We wanted to increase production capacity to meet our distribution demand and grow our market reach,” Bland says. “We also love being in a neighborhood in OP and providing a taproom for the many families nearby. Being right off a highway was a big plus, and being in a neighborhood was great. We loved the history of this space.”
The vast site offered ample room to outfit a 30-barrel brewhouse. The Overland Park brewhouse is twice the size of the West Bottoms, and the facility has five times the production capacity of the original brewery.
“We are getting the finishing work done now to brew as soon as possible, most likely in early 2027,” Bland says. “We plan to produce the majority of our distribution beer kegs and cans from Overland Park. We will have more unique and one-off beers produced in the West Bottoms location.”
Stockyards’ West Bottoms taproom is known for its long-running Sunday Service, a rotation of regional musicians performing traditional and original Americana music.
Watching the musicians sway with the music, taproom guests are drawn into the riff of guitar and banjo, the steady pulse of upright bass and the longing wail of steel guitar. It’s the kind of live music that makes a taproom feel like much more than a place to grab a beer. The brewery aims to cultivate this same family-friendly live music atmosphere in Overland Park when it gets up and running.
“We are continuing to grow our taproom activities, like bingo on Sundays, trivia on Tuesdays and live music a few times a month on Saturday nights,” Bland says. “We are building a great group of local regulars and families that come in often. We are continuing to see new faces as well and hope to see many more as we continue to add activities and live music.”
10310 Mastin St., Overland Park & 1600 Genessee St., KCMO
Brewery Bound Across Kansas: Here are a few more Kansas breweries.
7211 W. 97th St., Overland Park
Discourse owner Matt Britton’s Used 8 Track Dortmunder won gold in the Dortmunder/Export or German-Style Oktoberfest category at the 2026 World Beer Cup competition. discoursebrew.com
Servaes Brewing Company
10921 Johnson Dr., Shawnee & 118 S. Second St., Atchison
Courtney Servaes opened a downtown Shawnee brewery and taproom in 2019, the first Kansas brewery owned and operated by a female head brewer. Her Atchison riverfront location occupies a former railroad freight depot, an 1887 building on the National Register of Historic Places. servaesbrewco.com
Friction Beer Company
Co-owners Nathan Ryerson and Brent Anderson opened a brewery and music-inspired taproom in the former Hartman & Sons Hardware store, contributing to a resurgent downtown Shawnee. Song titles as beer names? That tracks. frictionbeer.com
Sandhills Brewing
5612 Johnson Drive, Mission & 111 W. Second Ave., Hutchinson, KS
Co-founded by twin brothers Jonathan and Pippin Williamson and friend Joe Cizek, the Hutchinson taproom debuted in 2018, with the Mission brewery and taproom opening the following year. Avian-named beers such as Junco Hazy New England IPA and Peregrine German Style Lager are representative “of the places we come from and call home.” sandhillsbrewing.com
Red Crow Brewing
Owned by Chris and Mistie Roberts, along with Mistie’s parents, Joe and Loretta Fisher, Red Crow’s beers are named after women in the family. Casual Foodie food truck serves tasty food. Reserve and nestle in The Nest, a private event space for family, community and corporate events. redcrowbrew.com
