Now open: A fun new Wichita shop that prints your face on your latte. See how it works.
Monday was opening day for Papa’s General Store, the new ice cream and coffee shop owned by Derek Sorrels in the former Flavors Coffee and Ice Cream Bar spot in Clifton Square, 3700 E. Douglas.
Late last week, I got a demo.
The device, which to my knowledge is the first one in Wichita, will print your face, your puppy’s face or just about anything you want onto the top of your latte foam. It’s a pretty neat trick that doesn’t seem necessary in life — until you see it.
On Friday, I drank my face, and it was fun.
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Here’s how it works: Sorrels and his staff first make a latte with a nice pool of foam on the top. Customers can either choose from the machine’s variety of pre-programmed pictures and cartoon images or they can download the Ripples app onto their phones and send a photo to the machine.
The printer uses pods that transfer tiny droplets of coffee onto the foam to make the image, and it appears on top of the drink in about 10 seconds. The image stays put for quite a while — until you start sipping.
You can watch a video of the machine in action on the Dining with Denise Facebook page.
The machine also comes with pods that will print in beer foam, so Sorrels said he might take the machine to a favorite beer pub sometime and give that a try, too.
In addition to the fun new latte feature, Papa’s General Store also serves craft ice cream and floats made using some of the offbeat sodas Sorrels stocks at his other business, Sweet ‘n Saucy in Delano.
He’s infused the shop with lots of fun details, including an ice cream cone-shaped table and chairs he found, plastic spoons that turn purple when they touch ice cream, and a wall of television sets playing classic black-and-white shows from the past — “The Andy Griffith Show” and the like.
In the upstairs section, Sorrel has lots of fun socks for sale, as well as novelty adult gifts.
The shop’s hours are 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily.
This story was originally published May 11, 2020 at 9:44 AM.
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