Frozen custard chain coming to College Hill altering design to fit ‘neighborhood vibe’
People driving down East Douglas on Friday morning noticed some demolition going on at the old Taco Tico building that for nearly 50 years has held a string of Wichita restaurants — most recently Dempsey’s Biscuit Co.
Now, there’s confirmation about what’s happening there. On Friday, Andy’s Frozen Custard franchisee Brian Cates confirmed what I reported last month: that he’s opening a new custard shop on the site at 3425 E. Douglas.
The new Andy’s will open in May, he said.
Cates, who also owns Wichita’s two existing Andy’s Frozen Custard shops at 9750 E. 21st St. North and 10788 W. 21st St. North, said that he’s always wanted to open in a neighborhood setting and that when the College Hill spot became available it was an “absolute no-brainer” that he’d take it.
“College Hill has been our first choice forever, and when an opportunity was presented to me, it didn’t take but a blink of an eye to say, ‘Yes, absolutely yes. This is where we want to be,’” he said.
But, Cates said, he’s also aware that the flashing neon lights and digital signs that are on his east and west stores wouldn’t fit into the College Hill neighborhood vibe.
He got special permission directly from chain president Andy Kuntz to design a store that would blend into College Hill, he said. The new store will have neon lights, but they won’t be the moving, flashing, animated kind that are on his other stores. Also, he said, he’s opted not to have a digital sign on the College Hill shop.
He also got Kuntz to approve a mural for the west-side of the building, something that no other store in the Andy’s chain has, he said. Local artist John Pirtle has been commissioned to paint the mural, which will have a College Hill theme.
“We’ve taken quite a few steps to make this building fit into College Hill so it’s not just another, ‘stamp our business and stick it in there,’ thing,” he said.
Demolition on the old building started on Friday, but Cates said he’s not taking the whole structure down. He’s removing only the front 18 feet so that he can put a large patio on the front, one that will run right up to the sidewalk. He’s also installing a bike rack and hopes that his store will become a neighborhood pedestrian destination.
Cates acknowledged the proximity of his business to two other ice creams shops in the immediate vicinity — the new Frost right next door and Papa’s General Store across the street in Clifton Square. He said he’s been working on the deal for more than a year and that those businesses didn’t exist when the process started.
He said he hopes the family-friendly neighborhood will support all the dessert options.
“We’re going to find our home in that neighborhood in due time,” he said. “It’s a forever home.”
Building dates back to 1973
The old building that Andy’s is taking over has had a long, active life as a restaurant space, and many delicious memories have been made within its walls.
It was constructed in 1973 to hold a Taco Tico and was one of two Taco Tico buildings that went up that year — the other was the one at 460 N. West St. The Wichita Eagle reported at the time that it would cost $35,000 to put up each of the “contemporary Mexican motif buildings.”
The building was a Taco Tico for a long, long time — until 2004. During its prime, it was a popular hangout for school kids from nearby Blessed Sacrament, who would sometimes sneak out for lunch and to play on the restaurant’s Pac-Man and Galaga games, according to recollections posted on Facebook this morning from a onetime student there.
In 2005, Taco Tico Inc. president Kevin Raven turned the space into a restaurant called Breezy’s Beach Time Grill, and he even put some fake palm trees out front to give the spot a beach-y feel. It served burritos, fajitas, tacos, burgers and frozen tropical cocktails. Though Raven said at the time he had high hopes for growing Breezy’s into a chain, it closed after less than a year.
Next up was Dolci & Joe’s, an upscale sandwich shop owned by Josh Crowe that also served burgers, salads and coffee. People loved its homemade ketchup and sweet potato fries, but that restaurant closed in January 2012.
In August of that year, a Mexican restaurant called Taco Tinga moved in. Owners Angel Varela and Mahmood Karim were offering inexpensive, fresh-made Mexican dishes, and the restaurant’s various meat fillings were on display in heating trays at the front. A year later, Taco Tinga was seized for failure to pay taxes, and though it briefly reopened, it was gone soon after.
The following year, in 2014, Schane Gross opened a sister restaurant to The Anchor called Fork & Fennel. It had a French bistro menu that featured dishes made with pork belly, roasted marrow bones and veal liver. People loved the restaurant, which featured locally sourced ingredients and had a menu of craft cocktails. But in September of 2016, Gross — who was also running The Anchor and its next-door meat market at the time — decided that running three businesses was too much for her and she closed Fork & Fennel.
The building’s final tenant was Dempsey’s Biscuit Co., which opened in February 2017. That restaurant was owned by Steve Gaudreau, who also has Dempsey’s Burger Pub in Clifton Square, and it served hot Nashville chicken and homemade biscuits and evolved into a top brunch destination. But in December, Gaudreau said he’d lost his lease on the space because its new landlord had “alternate plans for the building.” He moved the Dempsey’s concept over to his Crutch BBQ restaurant at 550 N. Rock Road, where he’s now serving the menus for both restaurants.
This story was originally published February 26, 2021 at 12:28 PM.
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