Owners of Wichita ice cream shop closed since December have new plans for their space
Fans of Little Lion Cafe at Revolutsia — the shipping container mall at Central and Volutsia — have lately been fretting about the future of the business.
Now, owners Ian and Jubilee Miller are ready to share their plans.
The couple, who announced a temporary closure of their business specializing in homemade ice cream and coffee back in December, have decided to go in a slightly different direction with the business. When it reopens on Saturday, it will have a new name and a new approach.
The business will now be called Better Yet Coffee Roasting, and it will allow Ian to get back to one of his passions — roasting coffee. Before he launched Little Lion with his wife, Miller had been the longtime coffee roaster for Reverie.
Better Yet will be a combination coffee roasting business and cafe. The Millers have installed a roaster in the loft of the space, which previously was used for seating, and that’s where Miller will do his work.
The main floor will still be a cafe, where the Millers will serve the coffee they’ve roasted upstairs, and the menu will include all the espresso drinks people expect from a coffee shop. The Millers said they’ll likely add snacks and treats that pair well with coffee but will start just with coffee. People will also be able to buy fresh roasted coffee beans to take home.
They’re also thinking of bringing back a few ice cream flavors in the future, but those details haven’t been finalized.
The cafe’s hours for its soft opening, which starts Saturday, will be 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays and from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesdays through Fridays. The Millers plan to eventually expand the hours.
The Millers also will continue to run their Placeholder Coffee, which they opened in May 2020, on the lower level of The Lux, 120 E. First St. They plan to roast coffees specially for Placeholder in the future.
The couple initially operated Little Lion out of mobile ice cream carts in 2015. In 2017, they started a “petit cafe” inside Espresso to Go Go in The Lux, where they sold their ice cream and breakfast burritos. In 2018, they moved into their own brick and mortar spot inside a charming stone cottage at 2721 E. Central, on the edge of the Revolutsia space. Theirs was the first business open in the development once it was built.
But in December, the Millers announced that they were closing the cafe for the winter, saying that the pandemic had taken a toll on business. They said at the time that they hoped to come back “with the kind of energy and service that we so love to give you.”
I’ll keep you posted on developments at Better Yet Coffee Roasters.
This story was originally published June 15, 2021 at 11:30 AM.
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