Wichita Mexican restaurant chain celebrating 55th birthday, remembering late founder
Felipe’s Mexican Restaurant celebrated its 50th birthday in 2017.
But the five years since have been among the Wichita institution’s most interesting — and in some ways most challenging, says owner Felipe Lujano Jr.
The COVID-19 pandemic, which shut down restaurants in early 2020 and has since wreaked havoc with staffing, supply chain issues and price increases, also affected Felipe’s, a four-restaurant local chain that Lujano’s father — the late Felipe Lujano Sr. — started in February 1967.
Felipe’s just turned 55, and the owners are celebrating the milestone by reflecting on the last five decades and on the last five years.
Lujano Jr., who along with his 86-year-old mother, Lucia, and younger brother, Poncho Lujano, runs the Felipe’s at 3434 W. Central and at 119th and Maple, says that the chain came out of the pandemic changed but stronger. (Felipe’s Jr. at 9718 E. Harry today is owned and operated by Lujano Sr.’s niece and her husband, Chela and Martin Martinez, and the Felipe’s at 21st and Woodlawn is owned by Lujano Sr.’s brother, Roberto Lujano.)
In the early days of COVID-19, Lujano Jr. said, his restaurants opened for carryout only, and customers stuck with them.
“We well exceeded our sales in carryout only for a while, so it was good,” Lujano said.
During a surge in COVID cases in December of 2020, Felipe’s restaurants cut their weekday lunch hours, and three of them have never resumed them: 3434 W. Central, 119th and Maple and 21st and Woodlawn. Felipe’s Jr. still serves weekday lunch, and all four have lunch on the weekends.
Lujano Jr. said the family has liked the slower pace, and so has the staff. He’s not sure when they’ll resume weekday lunch service, and customers have been understanding.
“We’ve gone back and forth,” he said. “But we’re happy to have a life outside of the restaurant, and we don’t want to overextend the people we do have who have stuck around forever.”
Felipe’s today is best known for its melty enchiladas, its fried flour tacos, its jumbo burritos and its fishbowl-sized Flaming Cazuela cocktails. But its beginnings were humble.
Felipe Lujano Sr. was a native of Tepatitlan, Mexico, who in his 20s immigrated to the United States and eventually landed in Newton, where relatives had a Mexican restaurant. In the early 1960s, he and a partner opened Tepa on North Broadway in Wichita, but the partnership crumbled, and in 1967 Lujano Sr. found his own space to rent on West Central.
He built his restaurant empire from there, and along the way, he shared his knowledge with a huge crop of future Wichita Mexican restaurant entrepreneurs. Many Mexican restaurants that have operated in the Wichita area over the years have their roots at Felipe’s, where their founders worked and learned from Lujano Sr.: Cortez and La Chinita in Wichita, Fabiola’s in Wellington and Acapulco in Newton among them.
Lujano Sr. died in 2003 at age 66 after a 10-month battle with liver cancer, but his son says he is happy that the family is still preserving his legacy.
“It’s definitely a milestone,” Lujano Jr. said of the restaurant’s 55th birthday. “We appreciate the time we’ve been here and our customers.”
This story was originally published February 7, 2022 at 2:29 PM.
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