Thrive Restaurant Group is retooling its Wichita dessert concept in a new space

There’s good news and just a bit of bad news for fans of Peace, Love & Pie.

Thrive Restaurant Group’s pie business downtown at Naftzger Park is closing, but its pies still will be available through a new business.

“We’re going to kind of retool and open Bake Sale in Bradley Fair,” said president and CEO Jon Rolph.

Bake Sale Treat Parlor will open in the former Marble Slab Creamery space next to Lululemon.

This is the last week of business for Peace, Love & Pie, which is open noon to 6 p.m. through Saturday.

During this week, some of the Bake Sale items will be available at Peace, Love & Pie.

“We always thought we’d do more than just pie,” Rolph said. “We need to do more than pie. We want to catch more occasions.”

He said his team, which is led by “awesome bakers” Erin Groff and Hannah Schriever, now has a better idea of what it needs to succeed.

“This is the same talent using their expansive skill set.”

There will be cookies, gluten-free monster bars, cereal treats and a brookie, which is a half brownie and half cookie, along with cakes and pies. There also will be a variety of beverages, including coffee and alcoholic drinks.

“We love the creativity from this baking team,” Rolph said.

Although they’re trying to capitalize on an approachable bake sale concept — the idea of sharing best recipes with a community and having a philanthropic aspect as well — Rolph said Bake Sale still will offer more premium-type desserts that aren’t the kind you can buy off the shelf at most other places.

However, he said there will be more elasticity in the menu, meaning there are a variety of items to suit a variety of needs, such as a bunch of cookies to feed a lot of kids for cheaper than the price of a pie.

Rolph said the new concept is about creating more opportunities with an expanded menu.

Thrive Restaurant Group is a large Applebee’s franchisee and has a long-term brand in Carlos O’Kelly’s, but some of its other brands feed what Rolph calls an entrepreneurial need.

“This idea of wanting to create new things for the marketplace,” he said.

Rolph said it’s a process of putting an idea out there, listening to feedback and responding to what the marketplace wants.

“This is part of our entrepreneurial process.”

Peace, Love & Pie opened in December 2019 right before the pandemic hit.

“The marketplace has been hard to read with the pandemic and everything going on,” Rolph said.

He’s not sure what would have happened with the concept if the pandemic hadn’t happened.

“It’s really tough to say.”

Bake Sale will open in early July. There will be some seating in the business, but it’s the walk-by traffic Rolph is particularly focused on.

“It’s a higher foot traffic area in the evening, and we realize for dessert that’s what you need.”

He said there was good daytime traffic at Naftzger Park, where one of Thrive’s HomeGrown breakfast and lunch restaurants still is.

“We love having HomeGrown there. It’s really special.”

Peace, Love & Pie also has a food truck.

“We’re trying to figure that out,” Rolph said of its future.

First, though, the focus is on the new concept at Bradley Fair, where another HomeGrown restaurant already is.

Rolph said he always hopes to build scalable concepts, meaning he creates a concept with the idea of replicating it, but he’s not thinking of expansion plans just yet.

“We know we’ve got to get the first one right.”

This story was originally published June 1, 2022 at 1:11 PM.