Wichita’s Tight Ends restaurant is ditching skimpy uniforms, revealing new name, identity
In early June, the sign came off of Tight Ends Sports Bar & Grill at the corner of Seneca and Kellogg in Wichita, and a banner was hung on the building that read “New name coming soon.”
Since then, the restaurant has remained open, operating unofficially as The Restaurant Formerly Known as Tight Ends.
Now, the local owners are ready to reveal their new identity and their new approach, which will include a different name and a high-end bar food menu but will not include waitresses dressed in barely-there, backside-bearing outfits.
“We had a good run with Tight Ends,” said Elysia Rizo, one of the partners in the restaurant since opening day. “It was fun. But we just listened to the community and realized what was working and what wasn’t working. We want our emphasis to be more on what our menu offers and not what the staff is wearing.”
The bar’s new name, Rizo said, will be Clutch House, a reference to the “clutch” play that makes or breaks a sporting event. The owners will likely close the restaurant for a week later this month and then reopen with the new name and menu, sometime around Aug. 28, she said. The partners ended their licensing agreement with Texas-based Tight Ends earlier this summer.
The menu will feature upscale versions of bar food, including more seasonal salads, sandwiches, burgers and entrees that are “flavorful and robust,” she said. A few Tight Ends favorites, like the restaurant’s PB&J burger with jalapeno bacon jam, will remain.
The staff, which now will include male bartenders, will wear red, black and white uniforms that will be “way more wholesome,” she said.
Rizo said the restaurant, which features lots of television sets, will remain a destination for people to watch big sporting events. The local owners, who also include Emmanuel Kolluri, Nick Nickles and Kyle Hughes, also plan to expand their popular patio, which is on the north side of the building, and will add a second level this fall.
They also intend to make the bar more community-focused and offer live music, hang local art and serve local beers.
Tight Ends first opened in new construction at Kellogg and Seneca in September of 2019. The owners had a licensing agreement with the owner of the original Tight Ends in Plano, and their signature was their waitresses wearing barely-there outfits.
When the project was first announced, residents of the nearby Delano neighborhood started an unsuccessful petition against it.
Rizo said the partners are now ready to see new faces in the restaurant.
“We have learned so much throughout this process,” she said. “We want to be just kind of open to everybody and welcoming to everybody.”
I’ll have more information about Clutch House in the coming weeks, including its hours and a look at its menu.
This story was originally published July 26, 2021 at 12:46 PM.
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