Wichita buddies refused to pause morning coffee meetup just because their shop was closed
What’s a group of mostly retired buddies to do when the dining room of their favorite coffee shop closes for remodeling?
Find another spot to meet? Suspend the coffee klatsch until the dining room reopens?
No way.
Instead, a group of coffee drinkers that had been meeting every weekday morning for years at Il Primo — one of Wichita’s original coffee shops — came up with another idea. During the recent two-week period that the shop’s dining room was closed, the friends — who all have Wichita’s Blessed Sacrament church in common — set their camp chairs up in a circle every morning in the Il Primo parking lot.
One of them would walk up to the still-open drive-through window and order a carafe of black coffee and several cups, said Daniel Mariotti, who has owned the coffee shop in Normandie Center, at Central and Woodlawn, for the past six and a half years.
The coffee would be distributed, and the morning meeting would continue as scheduled.
“They’ve been coming there since way before I owned the place,” Mariotti said on Monday. “They come in the morning five days a week to spend some time together and talk.”
Seeing that the group would not be deterred, Mariotti said, “It made me smile.” That kind of community is one of the reasons he bought the shop, which back in 1993, when it first opened, was one of the few coffee houses in town.
Back then, the concept of “Seattle-style coffee” was so foreign to Wichita that an Eagle reporter had to explain to the city exactly what it was. “That’s espresso, served up in a variety of ways, often with steamed milk or cream and a wide choice of flavored syrup,” read an article published a week after Il Primo opened in November of 1993.
Il Primo opening 1993 22 Nov 1993, Mon The Wichita Eagle (Wichita, Kansas) Newspapers.com
So what exactly is happening at Il Primo that forced these dedicated fans into the parking lot?
The shop, Mariotti said, is the latest to get a major makeover as part of a plan Normandie Center’s new owners Brent and Kerrie DuPont launched when they bought the almost 60-year-old shopping center in 2022.
The Il Primo project, which should be mostly wrapped up by early fall, will result in a completely new interior and exterior and will include a covered front patio with fans, heaters and a pass-through window. The shop will also get a double drive-through, and an all-new look and layout is planned for inside.
All of the changes have been needed for years, Mariotti said.
“It needed that major facelift to keep up with the customers,” he said. “We’d been struggling with some slower drive times and not really serving our customers the way we wanted to.”
The good news for the parking lot club is that the dining room reopened on Friday, and Mariotti said that their meetings have already resumed inside. Though the interior is far from finished and customers have to order in the back of the building for now, they are able to get their coffee and pastries for dine-in again.
The dining room will have to close again, likely for two to three weeks in August, Mariotti said, but his goal is to keep the drive-through open throughout the whole process so that customers always have access to coffee.
Work on the double drive through and patio should be complete by the end of September or the beginning of October, depending on how construction goes, Mariotti said. The refreshed dining room, which will have seating for around 60, also should be ready by then.
Though he’s excited about the upgrades, Mariotti said, he doesn’t want Il Primo to lose the feel of a coffee shop that existed before coffee shops were even a thing. He’s working with an interior designer who’s helping him refresh the space without making it too generic.
“We don’t want to lose that with having a fresh face,” he said. “We’re working really hard not to lose that aspect of it.
“We’re really excited about this, and I think it’s going to be great for the center and great for the community there. Il Primo has been around a long time, and we’re so well supported by the community.”
The parking lot group, by the way, is made up of a rotating cast of friends that includes Wichitans John Hammans, Steve Freach, Gary Kasitz, Ken Kern, Tom Rose and Matt Carney. Many members of the group have been friends for more than 40 years, Hammans said, and Freach is the longest-running member. Richard Dwyer, Trent Oatman and John Bauer frequently pop in. Some days four people show up. Some days, 11 people do.
The guys meet early in the morning Mondays through Fridays — and sometimes Saturdays — and discuss everything from sports to politics to religion to weather, Hammans said, adding that the group has been referred to as “The Table of Knowledge and/or the Liars’ Club.”
Hammans said the group feels like Il Primo is different from any other coffee shop, and they love not only Mariotti but also his staff. They wanted to continue supporting the business through the remodel and decided camping chairs would do just fine.
“And besides, we all like to be outdoors anyway,” Hammans said. “Our wives say we don’t have enough sense to come in out of the rain.”
In fact, he said, the group did sit outside in the rain one day last week, and it was just fine.
Members of the group support the remodel, and although they’ll miss some of the murals that were in the old shop, they feel confident the shop’s essence will remain.
“Going to Il Primo is not like going to any other coffee shop,” Hammans said. “It’s completely different. It’s almost like ‘Cheers’ with coffee.”
A new restaurant tenant is taking over the former NuWay space in Normandie Center
He announced plans for his own Wichita restaurant last summer. Now, it’s about to open
One of Wichita’s oldest restaurant groups has decided to close two of its four stores
