B’klyn booze beef
Vodka maker’s investors sue ‘tyrannical’ founders
BROOKLYN’S homegrown Industry City vodka is apparently a lot smoother to drink than to run.
A New Rochelle father and son say in a lawsuit that they put up much of the money to get the artisan booze manufacturer off the ground but other founders are ruining the company.
Peter Simon and his father, Douglas, are asking in their Manhattan Supreme Court suit for unspecified damages because of “breach of duty” by majority shareholders David Kyrejko and Zachary Bruner.
In court papers, Peter Simon says business with Industry City Distillery and its parent company, The City Foundry, has lagged because of internal conflicts.
He says in the suit that Kyrejko, an engineer who developed a unique fermentation and distillation process that transforms raw beet sugar into 80 proof vodka, has “a tyrannical personality” that causes employees to leave and distribution deals to falter.
“Kyrejko refused to be managed,” Simon, 25, claims.
Simon alleges that Kyrejko last year threatened to destroy the Sunset Park manufacturing space and all the equipment and technology in it.
Kyrejko, 29, also told Simon he would never stab him in the back but he might stab him “in the face,” according to court papers.
Simon says he got two distributors — 2 Fly Wines and T. Edwards Wines — committed to buying enough vodka for the company to reach its profit-making level of 4,000 bottles per month.
Simon says he hired someone in the fall of 2012 to work with Kyrejko to increase production, but Kyrejko made that impossible by refusing to share his secret formula with her. Last November, after Simon’s father notified the founder that he intended to turn his $150,000 loan into a 5% stake in the company, Kyrejko and Bruner, 28, came up with their own plan — Simon could run the distillery but the patent for the vodka would go to the foundry, which they would own.
Court papers say that the partners almost had a settlement when Kyrejko and Bruner abruptly changed course two weeks ago and fired Simon. He says in papers that he subsequently discovered they were double crossing him — looking for financing so the foundry could become a competitor to the distillery and make its own booze.
Kyrejko did not respond to calls, but Bruner said, “We’re disappointed with the development. We look forward to resolving it. We don’t believe the allegations have merit.”
Their lawyer, David Feldman, declined to comment.