Final Wichita Pie Five Pizza closes; another Molino’s to open in its space

UPDATED — Four years after bringing the Pie Five Pizza concept to Wichita, Jim Stevens has closed his final one near 21st and Rock Road.

“Well, we just didn’t have the support to keep it open,” he says.

“I don’t know what the problem was,” Stevens says. “Everyone I talked to said they really liked the pizza.”

Molino’s Mexican Cuisine owner Mario Quiroz says 2035 N. Rock Road is “a great location with a lot of traffic,” so he and his wife, Mara Garza, are going to open a new version of their restaurant there.

“This is going to be more like build your own taco,” he says.

More on that in a minute.

Stevens had a total of six Pie Five restaurants at one point, including ones in Wichita, Hutchinson and Omaha.

“All across the board, all the Pie Fives started dropping (in sales), then they started closing stores up,” he says, adding that it’s “kind of confusing to me why it didn’t work better.”

He speculates that families may have preferred ordering one large pizza from other restaurants instead of several individual ones like Pie Five offers.

Stevens still has 24 Applebee’s restaurants and is an owner in a company that has three Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers restaurants in South Carolina.

Quiroz says he’ll open quickly — probably 60 to 90 days — in the space where Pie Five closed Sunday.

That’s likely to be even before his Molino’s at Revolutsia, the shipping container development at Central and Volutsia, opens.

“We’re trying to keep here as simple and quick as possible,” Quiroz says of the Rock Road space.

“This is not going to be a full-dining restaurant,” he says. “You’ll come to the counter, order what you want, pay at the end.”

There will be seating or to-go service.

Quiroz calls it a fast-casual concept, which will have some version of the Molino’s name, though he hasn’t decided on it yet.

He plans margaritas and a few beer and wine options.

“Just something simple.”

Quiroz opened his first Molino’s next to Juarez Bakery on Waco in 2013.

He briefly opened the concept near 37th and Rock Road but closed it in November.

Look for more information on the Rock Road space in a couple of months.

This story was originally published August 20, 2018 at 1:48 PM.