Owner of popular vegan bakery opens a new Wichita cafe, and it serves meat eaters, too
If you’re looking to be socially distant when you dine, perhaps 266,489 square feet would help.
A new cafe has recently opened inside the massive Ruffin Building at 9111 E. Douglas — the onetime Pizza Hut headquarters that now is home to a variety of businesses, including radio stations and call centers.
The new cafe is open to the public, not only to the people who work in the building.
Called Poppies Cafe, the business is owned by NiceBites vegan bakery founder Sarah Hammond and her son, Cole. It opened last week.
Poppies Cafe has taken over the space on the office building’s main floor that was previously home to Foster’s Deli, and its specialties are soups, sandwiches, salads, bowls and baked goods. Even though the Hammonds’ specialty is vegan fare, this cafe also offers options for the meat-eating crowd.
Sarah Hammond said she was approached about opening a cafe in the space after she started renting its commercial kitchen to make her baked goods, which she provides to 10 different coffee shops, including one in Kansas City. She wasn’t sure she wanted to get into the cafe business, she said, but then her son, Cole, expressed interest in running the cafe for her.
It’s off to a good start, she said, though at the moment, many of the people who usually work in the building are working from home because of COVID-19. She expects that people will eventually return to the office and provide more business, but she’s also hoping that members of the public will wander over for breakfast or lunch. The cafe is easy to find if people enter the building through its front north-facing doors.
The menu, which you can see below, includes breakfast items like avocado toast, loaded breakfast bagels and breakfast sandwiches, both plant-based or meat-filled. So far, the most popular sandwich, Sarah Hammond said, is the Cuban panini but there’s also a ham and Swiss panini, a Caesar wrap and a “plant-powered” pesto spinach grilled cheese.
Customers also have been liking the Korean bowl, she said, which comes with a choice of chopped steak or grilled chicken, and there’s also a bowl made with veggies. In addition, fans of NiceBites’ vegan baked goods, which include cinnamon rolls, scones, cookies and more, can stop into the cafe to load up as well. (She also has dairy-free and gluten-free bakery items in the case.)
Sarah Hammond said she named the cafe for her late father, who her kids called “Poppy.” There’s some seating inside the cafe space and even more seating in the building’s large atrium.
The hours for Poppies Cafe are 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, though on the first Thursday of every month, Poppies will reopen from 5 to 8 p.m. for those who want to visit over the dinner hour.
For more information, call 316-771-1333.
Poppies Cafe menu
This story was originally published September 8, 2021 at 2:17 PM.
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