West Wichita getting a new Starbucks. Plus one store closes, another files to unionize
Wichita’s first new Starbucks in more years will open on Wichita’s west side.
Developer Hamid Bakhtiari, who announced in September a plan to add a Starbucks at 301 S. Andover Road in Andover, now has worked out another deal with the coffee chain.
In March, construction should start on a stand-alone Starbucks on West 21st Street. The store will go on an empty one-acre piece of land that sits between Good Shepherd Episcopal Church, 8021 W. 21st St., and All Star Sports, 8333 W. 21st St. Bakhtiari said it should be open toward the end of the year.
The new Starbucks won’t be far from the one that has operated at NewMarket Square since 2003. But this one will be a bit easier to navigate, Bakhtiari said. Customers at the NewMarket Starbucks must traverse an often-congested area to get to the drive-through lane, which sits behind a strip center that also houses a popular Chipotle.
The new Starbucks will have a more modern layout and a drive-through, Bakhtiari said. He predicts that it will be popular, especially with members of the church next door.
“I think it’s a good addition,” he said. “It fits the neighborhood, and it’s a good partner to the church. They’ve been wonderful to work with, and I think it’s definitely going to be beneficial for their congregation.”
The last time a new Starbucks opened in Wichita was in 2019, when the downtown store opened on the ground floor of the Hilton Garden Inn at 401 E. Douglas.
An old Starbucks location closes
The once-popular Starbucks kiosk in the Towne East Square food court, which originally opened in September of 2015 and often had long lines of teenage girls waiting to order pink and whipped-cream-topped drinks, has closed. The kiosk has been vacant for a few weeks.
I left a message with mall management asking about any plans for the spot.
Wichita Starbucks workers unionize
On Friday, the workers at the Starbucks at Central and Tyler in Wichita announced that they’d filed a petition to unionize with the National Labor Relations Board.
In a news release, the workers said they’d sent a letter to Starbucks’ CEO Laxman Narasimhan announcing their intentions. The employees want to unionize, the release said, to “challenge continual understaffing, inconsistent and unfair scheduling, and a lack of support from management.”
Workers at the Central and Rock Starbucks successfully unionized in August 2022. That same month, workers at the 21st and Amidon Starbucks also filed a petition to unionize but ultimately weren’t able to secure the votes to do so.
According to the nonprofit More Perfect Union, which is tracking Starbucks unionization efforts, 481 Starbucks stores in 46 states have filed to unionize since December 2021, and 381 stores have won union elections.
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