Tour the new Barn’rds, which opens next week with a salvaged memento from the original
The tears were flowing on Friday at Barn’rds, a family-owned Wichita roast beef restaurant that for 37 years has operated out of a barn-shaped building at 21st and Woodlawn.
It was the restaurant’s last day in that space before it moves into an all-new restaurant building on the other side of town, and so many customers came to bid the old place farewell that the Hertel family set a one-day sales record.
When the doors were finally locked, Troy Hertel — whose parents Carol and Ken founded the restaurant in 1983 — popped a bottle of champagne. He’d shed all the tears he could by 5 p.m., he said, and he was ready to say goodbye.
“It was a pretty emotional day for customers and for me,” he said.
New restaurant about to open
Now, the family is just days away from reopening in their new spot at 3860 N. Maize Road. They still have much to finish between now and Tuesday, when the restaurant opens, but this week, they offered a tour of the new space.
It’s a slicker, brighter, more modern version of the original, and it will have more space — 3,700 square feet as opposed to 2,000. The new restaurant also will feature a drive-through and a spacious outdoor patio, and in an attempt to be more kid friendly, the family is adding chicken tenders to the menu.
The new building isn’t barn-shaped, and the owners brought only one major souvenir of the old space with them — a piece of the outdoor sign that was affixed to the building’s “silo” and reads “The real roast beef sandwich.” The Hertels will hang it above the soda station in the new place.
But the new restaurant is cozy and homey inside, with a working fireplace, photos of farm scenes on the walls, and lots of high-backed booths made out of German beechwood.
The booths, which the family ordered before COVID-19 hit, have such high backs that they’ll provide natural barriers between tables during the pandemic.
“We’re going to have lots of booths where they can have lots of privacy,” Troy Hertel said. “There’s really high backs on them, which turned out to be dumb luck during coronavirus because we’d already had them being built, but it’s going to work in our favor.”
Customers who visit the new Barn’rds will order at the counter, get a number and their drink cups, fill their drinks and then take a seat and wait for their food to be delivered to them, Hertel said. The new restaurant employs all the latest technology, and the menu will be displayed on TV screens behind the counter.
The staff from the east store has moved to the new store, and Hertel was able to add about 15 new jobs. The new employees trained in the original store before it closed.
Restaurant on the move
The Hertels first announced plans to open a new restaurant at 37th and Maize in 2007, but they faced many delays over the years.
Initially, their plan was to have restaurants on both sides of town, but when they were actually ready to start construction late last year, Troy Hertel said, he realized that with his parents getting older, he wouldn’t have the help he needed to run two successful restaurants. They decided they’d close the east store and focus on having “one really good restaurant” out west.
Founder Ken Hertel said he hopes all of his longtime customers will make the drive across town to visit the new place. He loves the way it turned out, he said, but the business is nothing without its loyal customers and their devotion to Barn’rds roast beef sandwiches, vegetable soup and chicken salad.
“It’s not the building,” he said. “It’s the relationships we’ve created over 37 years with people. We’ve seen three generations of people coming through our restaurant. They became our family.”
Once open, the new Barn’rds will be open daily from 10:30 a.m. until 9 p.m.
This story was originally published September 9, 2020 at 2:12 PM.
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