Smoothie King reopening four Wichita area stores, adding four more over next two years
Wichita will soon be smoothie central, it appears.
Just as Hurts Donut owners Aaron and Jenni Courtney announced plans to bring the Tropical Smoothie Cafe chain to town — starting with a store at 2768 N. Maize Road this fall and followed by at least two more in the near future — Smoothie King is now saying it will not only reopen its recently closed Wichita locations but also add four more.
This week, Kevin King — who is the chief development officer for the Smoothie King chain — said that his company would be bringing back the four Wichita-area Smoothie Kings that closed abruptly in the fall. The store in Derby has just reopened, he said, and the Smoothie King at 711 E. Douglas will reopen next week. The Smoothie King stores on West Central and on Rock Road will return at the end of March or the first of April, he said.
The four stores are now “company owned,” King said, and they have new phone numbers.
“We’re doing a lot of work in them,” he said. “They’ll look fresh and new and definitely be cleaned up and a little bit nicer. We’re excited to be back in the Wichita market.”
They’re so excited, King said, that they’re planning to double the number of Smoothie King stores in the Wichita market over the next two years. He said the company will add two new Smoothie Kings this year and up to two next year.
At least one will open in new construction, he said. The company is in the process of looking at sites for the others. King was in town this week meeting with his real estate group, he said.
In November, longtime Smoothie King franchise Neil Bhakta abruptly closed his three Wichita Smoothie Kings at 8000 W. Central, 711 E. Douglas, and at 3236 N. Rock Road as well as the store at 1816 E. Madison Ave. in Derby.
At the time, Bhakta said he was having a dispute with the Smoothie King corporate office and that he planned to turn the stores into a new concept he called Rind & Grind. He put up signage and menus and briefly operated Rind & Grind stores, focused on coffee drinks, smoothies and fresh-squeezed limeades and lemonades, in the spaces in Derby and on West Central in Wichita. But they closed fairly quickly.
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Earlier this month, he opened a Rind & Grind at 617 E. Crawford St. in Salina. I’ve left Bhakta messages asking if he plans to bring Rind & Grind back to Wichita but haven’t heard back yet.
King said he’d let me know when he’d settled on sites for the new Smoothie King stores.
This story was originally published March 11, 2021 at 10:39 AM.
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