COVID-19 delayed this west Wichita coffee business, but it’s now almost ready to open
Update: The new Scooter’s at Maple and West opened on Monday, Sept. 21.
What for more than a year has been an unkempt lot at a busy west-side intersection is now the site of a new drive-through coffee shop that’s almost ready to open.
Next week, Scooter’s Coffee franchisee Mackenzie Burnett will open her fourth Wichita shop on the northwest corner of West and Maple streets. She hasn’t settled on a precise opening day, she said, but it will likely be early in the week.
Burnett also owns the Scooter’s at 3123 N. Rock Road, at 7399 W. Central and at 3480 N. Ridge Road as well as some Scooter’s stores in Missouri. Wichita has several other Scooter’s that are owned by different franchisees.
Burnett confirmed her plans to open the new store in January and at the time said she hoped to have it ready by March. But when COVID-19 hit, she took a step back.
“There were just too many unknowns. We kind of paused,” she said. “But once COVID was a little more known, we pushed the play button again.”
The sleek new store is drive-through only. It has a menu board and speaker on one side of the building and a pickup window on the other.
Its hours will be 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays and 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sundays.
The lot where the new Scooter’s sits had once been home to a Long John Silver’s. After that restaurant went out of business, several Mexican restaurants moved in then closed.
A year ago, the Oklahoma owners of the 25,000-square-foot building just south of Hog Wild Pit Bar-B-Que decided to tear it down and look for someone who wanted to lease the land and build something new.
This story was originally published September 16, 2020 at 2:34 PM.
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