Another Wichita restaurant concept is about to expand into Kansas City
The Kansas City area is learning what it’s like to eat like a Wichitan lately.
First, it was HomeGrown, a Wichita-born breakfast and lunch restaurant that expanded earlier this month into Kansas City’s Brookside neighborhood.
And by the first part of next year, Wichita’s Meddys will enter the Kansas City market as well. Owner Alex Harb said he’s finalized a lease for a 2,800-square-foot space on the end cap of a new shopping center at 4105 W. 83rd St. in Prairie Village. He hopes to have it open no later than January.
He’s currently scouting out sites to add Meddys restaurants in Lee’s Summit, Olathe and south Overland Park as well. Harb said his expansion into the Kansas City area is part of a larger plan to open 50 Meddys restaurants across the region during the next five years.
He thinks the restaurant will work in the Kansas City area, which doesn’t have the Mediterranean restaurant saturation that Wichita does. With its large Lebanese community, Wichita has historically been home to some of the best hummus, shawarma, fattoush salad and gyro in the region.
“They do have several Mediterranean restaurants there,” Harb said. “But I didn’t feel that the quality or the presentation was anywhere close to the level we’re playing at in Wichita.”
You might remember that Harb announced plans expand into Kansas City back in October of 2018, only to switch direction just before the pandemic started. In February of 2020, he decided that real estate prices were too high in Kansas City and that he would start his expansion in Tulsa instead.
But once the pandemic took hold and people began demanding curbside pickup, Harb decided that his Tulsa property wasn’t set up for that. He got out of his lease and began eyeing Kansas City again.
Tulsa is still in his plans, though, as is Oklahoma City.
Meanwhile, work continues on Harb’s fifth Wichita Meddys, which is going into the former BurgerFi space at NewMarket Square. 21st and Maize. That restaurant will have a large covered patio and will offer live music.
Opening day for the NewMarket Square restaurant should be sometime in mid-October, he said.
Harb’s first Meddys, a quick-service restaurant focused on fresh Mediterranean fare, opened in 2014 at 7906 E. Harry, followed by 21st and Greenwich in 2016. He opened his third Meddys downtown at 120 S. Washington in late 2018, and it became the design prototype he wanted to adopt for all future restaurants. Over the next two years, he retrofitted his first two restaurants with that design.
Wichita’s fourth Meddys opened last October at 560 S. Ridge Road.
This story was originally published August 19, 2021 at 2:36 PM.
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