This Wichita bierock cafe closed over the summer. But its founders are firing it up again.
The coffee shop space at 2615 W. 13th St. has been vacant since June, when its most recent owners shut it down.
But starting this week, the shop is once again serving the coffee drinks and bierocks it’s been known for off and on since 2018.
Want Bierock founders Jim and Lori Want are back in the building serving bierocks, coffee drinks and breakfast to-go from their drive-through window. That’s all they’ll do for now, though they plan to reopen the dining room as well.
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For now, the drive-through hours will be 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays and 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. In addition to espresso drinks and several types of bierocks, the Wants also will be serving a breakfast menu that includes sausage kolache, pastries and “biscuit-and-gravy bombs,” which feature bierock dough stuffed with sausage gravy.
The Wants originally opened their business in April of 2018, taking over a building formerly occupied by a coffee shop called Twisted Java. At first, they called it Want Coffee, but Lori’s homemade bierocks sold so well at the shop that a year later, they added a food trailer designed to take her creations all over town.
In 2020, the couple changed the name of their business to Want Bierock Co. and Coffee House. The Wants sold the cafe portion of the business to Gabriel and Kari Nicholson in February 2021 but kept the food trailer. They added a second trailer earlier this year and continued to use the building on 13th Street as a home base for their bakery.
The Nicholsons decided to close the cafe in June, citing the challenges of running a small business. But the Wants still had the lease on the space.
“We were out on our food trucks all summer and built that business amazingly,” Lori said. “And when the other people moved out of here, we decided that we were going to finish out our food truck season and then reopen.”
Over the last several months, they’ve expanded the footprint of the bakery, Lori Want said, and they also plan a remodel of the dining room. The building, a former McDonald’s, still has the uncomfortable, outdated bench seating that McDonald’s used years ago.
Once they get that remodel done, they’ll also likely expand the hours, Lori Want said. It likely will be at least February or March before that happens.
Since late last month, the Wants have had one of their two bierock trucks set up at the Illuminations event at Botanica, where they’ve seen old customers and gained new ones.
“We have had such a great response from so many people who are excited we are opening up again,” Lori said.
When they sold the cafe back in 2021, their plan was to retire and use the food truck to generate some “fluff money,” she said.
But as it turns out, the couple missed their work.
“Jim and I just love what we do, and we really do miss all of the people that came into the coffee shop cafe,” she said. “We’re excited to reconnect with them.”
This story was originally published December 11, 2023 at 12:05 PM.
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