The latest on three Wichita food halls: One has closed, two are still coming
Several Wichita entrepreneurs have talked about the concept of “food halls” — where several food vendors operate out of one space. A prime example in the region is Mother Road Market in Tulsa, which boasts 25 different restaurant and retail vendors operating out of a converted warehouse.
So far in Wichita, though, only one — Plentibloom in the Ruffin Building downtown — has materialized, and it lasted for just six months.
But doesn’t mean Wichita is out of the food hall running. Two others are still in the works and should be up and running next year. Here’s the latest:
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CLOSED — Plentibloom, 100 N. Broadway: A year ago, Jumbo’s Beef & Brew owner Kayson Chong took over the big cafe area on the walkway level of the Ruffin Building at Douglas and Broadway and turned it into a mini food hall. His concept: Get local restaurants to provide some of their best-selling dishes and offer them up each day to people who worked in the building as well as to outsiders who wanted to stop in.
But Chong closed Plentibloom in December. He recently said that downtown’s paid parking program, introduced two weeks after the food hall opened, discouraged outsiders from coming to the building for lunch. Also, he said, customers had trouble figuring out which building Plentibloom was in, and those who did figure it out had trouble finding the food hall in the building.
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One restaurant is still operating in the space, though. Noble House Hawaiian Restaurant owner Akamu Noble, who closed his brick-and-mortar restaurant at 2119 W. 21st St., in August, joined the Plentibloom lineup that same month and ever since has been serving specialties like teriyaki chicken, kalua pork and ahi poke from the former Plentibloom area. He now leases directly from Ruffin properties, he said, and serves from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Mondays through Fridays.
STILL COMING — NICHE Food Hall: When WSU Tech’s culinary school, called NICHE, opened in the former Henry’s department store building in January 2023, it included on the first floor the infrastructure for a food hall that would offer kiosks for several different food vendors as well as lots of seating.
Three years later, the food hall has not yet been fully activated. But it will be, said John Michael, the director of NICHE.
As of now, the food hall has one vendor: The Coffee Spot, a student-run venture offering crafted coffee and tea drinks, became the hall’s first tenant when it opened in November 2024. It’s still going, and customers who patronize the culinary school’s Envision Bistro, open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. weekdays, tend to use the seating in the food hall.
But there are plans to move in two more vendors in time for the opening of the Wichita Biomedical Campus next year, Michael said. He already is in talks with two vendors and says a grand opening for the food hall could happen in the summer of 2027.
By then, he said, he also anticipates that leasing agents will have found a new restaurant tenant for the attached Jinya Ramen Bar space that has been vacant since the restaurant closed in November 2024 over developer Sudha Tokala’s parking dispute with the City of Wichita.
STILL COMING — Provecho Food Hall at the Nomar Theater, 2141 N. Market: Last year, the nonprofit Empower shared its plans to turn the former Nomar Theater and the vacant mural-covered building directly to its north into a big food hall. And recently, Empower posted that it was seeking to hire a director for the food hall.
Empower director Ariel Rodriguez said this week that the organization plans to break ground on the food hall this summer and that it would open sometime next year. The hall should have space for six or seven food businesses plus retail vendors and lots of seating.
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