Two Wichita restaurants that expanded into Kansas City are now both big hits

It’s pretty standard that people who live in Wichita crave the restaurants and entertainment venues that the much-larger Kansas City has.

Less often, Kansas Citians get turned on to a Wichita invention and go crazy for it.

That’s happened, though, over the past two years as two Wichita restaurants — Alex Harb’s Meddys and Thrive Restaurant Group’s HomeGrown — have branched out to Kansas City. Both have found great success, their owners report — and the restaurant writer for the Kansas City Star confirms. And both are now about to add more restaurants to the Kansas City area.

The most recent of the two to expand to Kansas City is Meddys, a quick-service Mediterranean restaurant that Harb introduced to the Wichita market in 2014 at 7906 E. Harry. Since then, he’s added four more: at 21st and Greenwich in 2016; at 120S. Washington in 2018; at 560 S. Ridge Road in 2020; and at 2441 N. Maize Road in 2021.

Wichita responded so well to the Meddys concept, which offers fresh Mediterranean sandwiches, salads, bowls and platters, Harb said, that he decided to expand into Kansas City. The first restaurant there opened in December at 4105 W. 83rd St. in Prairie Village, and the response was huge.

“It’s unbelievable, the feedback,” Harb said. “I was kind of terrified before it opened, and when we did, it got really busy. Almost four months into it, the numbers are improving and getting better and better.”

We don’t have to take Harb’s word for it, either. Joyce Smith, who writes about restaurants for the Kansas City Star and covered Meddys’ move into the market, confirmed that it’s been a big hit. She has a friend from Beirut who once owned a Lebanese restaurant in Kansas City, and he likes the place, she said.

“I was just there Monday, and it was packed, and I’m hearing that people like it,” she said of Meddys.

The first restaurant has done so well, Harb said, that he’s planning to open three more in the Kansas City area. The first will be at 6301 Brookside Plaza where a Panera operated until last summer. He hopes to have that one open in September.

He also is putting one into the Power & Light District in downtown Kansas City and hopes to have that one open in November. He’ll build another Meddy’s restaurant at 87th Street Parkway and I-435 in Lenexa and plans to have it ready in December.

Kansas City residents aren’t quite as familiar with Lebanese and Mediterranean fare as Wichita’s are, Harb said, and he’d like to help teach them much the way Latour founder Antoine Toubia taught Wichita in the late 1970s and early 1980s when he opened restaurants like Olive Tree and Cafe Chantilly.

“Antoine Toubia back in the day set the standard for Mediterranean cuisine in Wichita,” Harb said. “Kansas City never had an Antoine Toubia.”

A breakfast boom

Wichita-founded HomeGrown has been in Kansas City a bit longer than Meddys and also got a warm reception, said Joe Williams, who is the chief operating officer of emerging brands for Thrive.

Now, the breakfast-and-lunch concept is adding more Kansas City spots.

Thrive, which has three HomeGrown restaurants in Wichita, opened its first Kansas City-area restaurant in the tony Brookside neighborhood in late 2021. It took over the former Avenue Bistro at 338 W. 63rd St.

Since then, HomeGrown also has added a restaurant in Liberty, a suburb in north Kansas City., Mo.

“Both locations are doing great,” Williams said. “We’re on a wait every weekend and even hit a wait during the week every now and then, too.”

Smith, the Kansas City Star’s restaurant writer, said that HomeGrown also always looks busy.

Now, HomeGrown is moving into the Kansas side of Kansas City. A HomeGrown is set to open in Leawood, which is in Johnson County, in May. And Thrive is eyeing three or four other sites on both the Missouri and Kansas sides of Kansas City.

“We’d like to have at least six in the Kansas City market over the next five or six years,” Williams said.

The breakfast market is crowded in Kansas City, Williams said, and HomeGrown’s main competitor is the long-established First Watch chain of restaurants. But HomeGrown sets itself apart by trying to become an active member of a neighborhood where it opens, Williams said.

“We spend a lot of time and energy before we open looking for local partners,” he said. “We’ll have a whole list of a half a dozen or so local providers selling us sausage and eggs and honey or whatever we can find. No one else is trying to do that in the way we’re trying to do it. “

HomeGrown is expanding into other markets as well. One opened in Des Moines on Jan. 30, and it’s doing extremely well, Williams said. Thrive is also in the process of building a restaurant in Springdale, Arkansas, which is between Bentonville and Fayetteville. It should be ready by June.