Does KC’s Whitney VinZant own your favorite restaurant yet? Give him time
It was 10 a.m. on a rainy Friday in March, and Whitney VinZant – who over the last five years has become one of Kansas City’s most influential restaurateurs, buying up and redoing some of the city’s most beloved restaurants at peak pace — leaned back in his seat at Gram & Dun, the restaurant he purchased in 2020 on the Country Club Plaza.
“Where are we with the World Cup?” VinZant said to head chef Thomas Pelkey and to Corey Gonzalez, W. VinZant Restaurant’s chief operating officer. “Are we staying open until two in the morning? . . .They (fans) come all this way to support their team, they don’t want to be in the hotel room.”
Twenty minutes earlier, the 44-year-old father of four — a Mission Hills resident married to a pharmacist who is a former Miss Kentucky — had been in another meeting. He was talking to real estate broker David Block about what, to their disappointment, was beginning to look like an unsuccessful bid to open American Fire, a new upscale restaurant in the long-empty Houlihan’s site in nearby Fairway.
“I hope it occurs,” VinZant would later share, “but am not sure if it will.”
Not an hour later he’d hustle to Waldo Pizza (acquired in Dec. 2024) to taste a new Jack Stack Barbecue pizza, drizzled with cheesy corn, set to debut in April. Then on to Louie’s Wine Dive in Overland Park, an original VinZant concept, to talk about its wine club and VinZant wines bottled at George Vineyard, his own 63-acre Sonoma Valley winery named for his youngest son.
“In any given day, I’ll be in at least two or three restaurants,” VinZant said of what has become a fast-expanding stable: 13 distinct restaurant concepts, 19 locations in Kansas City, the Northland, Johnson County, as well as in Des Moines and St. Louis.
By any measure, VinZant’s company is on a tear — finding success in a tough market by acquiring established legacy brands with loyal followings, and, as he puts it, “elevating” them.
It started in 2012 with Louie’s Wine Dive, a concept VinZant began in Des Moines before quickly adding a second location in Waldo, at 7100 Wornall Road, where it lasted for eight years before closing in 2020. His Overland Park location opened in 2015.
In 2019, he then bought both BRGR Kitchen + Bar and Taco Republic from Bread and Butter Concept’s founder Alan Gaylin, the owner of Stock Hill south of the Country Club Plaza. In 2020, as COVID-19 struck, and Gaylin’s company was going through Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, VinZant acted. He purchased Gram & Dun on the Plaza and Urban Table in Prairie Village, relaunching it as Va Bene Italian Eatery. In 2022, he bought Overland Park‘s Brewtop Pub & Patio.
Over the last two years, the spree has only continued with Bo Ling’s on the Plaza, (May 2024) now called Heritage by Bo Lings, followed by Merchant’s Pub & Plate in Lawrence (Oct. 2024) and Waldo Pizza a few months later.
In August 2025, the group looked to buy the James Beard-nominated Corvino Super Club & Tasting Room in the Crossroads, before the deal collapsed. But it was quickly followed by the purchase of Cafe Trio (Sept. 2025) and the opening this year, with Penn Entertainment, of a second Gram & Dun location at the Argosy Casino in Riverside.
VinZant said he has no intention of stopping any time soon.
“We could stop, but it’s just not us,” he said. “If we ever slow in the passion for what we do, I’ll get out. We’re getting better. We’re continuing to improve our teams. We’re continuing to improve our operation, our results. I think we can continue to grow far beyond where we currently are.”
Heat outside the kitchen
That growth has not come without occasional controversy.
In 2023, a small group of former employees sued the company in federal court, alleging that W. VinZant Restaurants violated the federal Fair Labor Standards act by denying them what they claimed were owed tips and overtime pay. The case went to mediation.
Last year, two months after it was announced that VinZant was to purchase Corvino’s, chef Michael Corvino messaged his staff and abruptly walked away from the deal citing VinZant’s “inability to uphold their original commitments.”
“We cannot lower our standards or ethics no matter what,” Corvino wrote. The restaurant chose to close in January rather than sell.
At Cafe Trio, 4558 Main St., the recent takeover and makeover by VinZant has been met not with firings, but with an employee exodus.
Nearly all 20 of the former wait staff and bartenders, some of whom had been at the restaurant for 10 to 15 years, left out of frustration. In struggling with the decision whether to close or sell the restaurant, Trio’s founders Chris Youngers and Tai Nguyen ultimately opted to sell to the VinZant group at a negotiated price, in the belief that the staff they considered family would be kept on, as well as valued for their knowledge and experience.
But employees familiar with the negotiation said that when it finally came time to sell, Youngers and Nguyen were offered half the price originally agreed upon, and felt they had little option but to take it. The Star spoke to 10 former employees, all of whom requested anonymity because they feared blowback in the restaurant community, and all of whom said they felt disregarded and disrespected.
“Really,” said one, “I don’t have anything good to say about the restaurant group. They started sucking the life out of that restaurant in the first week they were there.”
“I feel sorry for all of us,” wrote a second. “We had the perfect job and these guys came in and f***ed everything up.”
“I know from an outsider’s point of view,” said yet another, “it may sound like, ‘Oh, you know, new management came in and they (staff) didn’t like it.’ That’s really not how it went down. Change was inevitable. We all expected that. No one was under any illusions. The restaurant had changed ownership. There’s a new vision, a new chef, new management.”
Most said they welcomed that change, knowing the restaurant needed to be refreshed, both its interior and menu, which had grown staid. The new chef who took over, Jacob Hilbert, formerly of Stock Hill, was praiseworthy.
“He’s a great chef,” a former Trio employee said.
But staff said they were also led to believe that the VinZant group was not there to overhaul the restaurant, but to improve it while maintaining the spirit of the place — keep what made it special, change what wasn’t working.
All employees interviewed spoke of the chaos that erupted when, with almost no notice, the entire menu was changed twice in two weeks with scant training for staff or tastings that would allow them to make recommendations or to speak knowledgeably about the dishes to customers.
Dishes that were favorites were either struck from the menu, or, in the case of Trio’s signature macaroni and cheese, “Mac Daddy,” was changed to the consternation of long-time patrons. The wine list was scrapped and replaced mainly with VinZant’s George Vineyard wines. Favorite cocktails were removed, sparking customer complaints. A few were brought back.
”They came over and took over,” a former employee said of VinZant. “To me, they just demolished Cafe Trio.”
‘Nothing but the best’
On Yelp, VinZant’s restaurants regularly rank well, receiving mostly four out of five stars on customer reviews: Gram & Dun, 4; Gram & Dun Argosy, 4 1/2; BRGR, 4; Taco Republic, 3; Taco Republic Truck 3 1/2; Va Bene, 4, Merchant’s 4; Louie’s Wine Dive, 4.
“Ultimately, for us to be successful restaurants,” he said, “we have to be really good at what we do in those restaurants. . . In my opinion, you have to be the best in the category you’re offering. . .It starts with the hospitality at the front, goes through the food, goes through our beverage program.”
Regarding the criticism from Trio’s employees, VinZant offered perspective.
First, he said, he believes it is important for people to know how the deal occurred. VinZant did not set out to buy Trio, he confirmed. Trio’s owners approached VinZant looking to sell. Although Trio had a deeply loyal following, it had not been profitable since COVID-19. Its owner were facing a pressing dilemma: Sell or shut their doors.
“I wish nothing but the best for the employees who may harbor these feelings about us,” VinZant said. “But the business was not sustainable. Change is difficult. But change was necessary at Cafe Trio. And we believe we have the ability to make it profitable in the long-term.”
The sale of Waldo Pizza, 7433 Broadway Blvd., was similar. It was losing money. The owner sought out VinZant.
In truth, VinZant said, the same kind of mass exodus Trio experienced occurred at Gram & Dun when they took over in 2020. But in the last 29 months, he said, they have lost only five servers there. At Cafe Trio, he said, year-over-year revenue is currently up 21%, a success he believes the former staff could have shared in.
“You know,” VinZant said, “these feelings about us — I only wish we’d been given a little more time than a couple of months.”
Passion and pitfalls
VinZant, to be sure, is not a chef.
He is an entrepreneur and businessman. Tall, with dark thinning hair combed back, he has a buoyant personality mixed with a scholarly air with his short cropped beard and, on a recent day, a checkered blazer. (If he wasn’t a restaurateur, he said, he might have chosen to be a history professor).
In charge of a leadership team of 70 employees, plus 900 more in his multiple restaurants, VinZant loves the intricacies of food and, especially, wine.
“I can talk and talk and talk about wine,” he said, noting that he had taken 19 trips to his vineyard last year, and pruned the vines himself. He became a sommelier in 2007. “I’m very passionate about it.”
About its chemistry. Its fermentation. How a wine’s terroir — the soils, climate, the vegetation it’s grown near — inspires the taste.
”I like how natural it is,” he said. “You grow a grape, you pick a grape, you press a grape, you ferment it, you age it. . . .It’s a labor of love. I like being out there, working with my hands, sweating, seeing a problem, fixing it. It’s a therapy in a way.”
The restaurant industry, of course, is notoriously volatile, one in which 50% of restaurants fail within the first five years, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says. About one third make it to 10 years. Challenges continue to mount: higher rents, higher food costs, higher property taxes, labor costs and changing consumer habits.
Only about 54% of U.S. adults report that they drink alcohol, according to a 2025 Gallup poll, the lowest percentage Gallup has charted in 90 years. Happy hours at restaurants are becoming increasingly sparse. People are eating out less. In one widely circulated report conducted by the research firm YouGov, 37% of U.S. diners said they ate out less in 2025 than they did the year before.
“It is an absolutely terribly challenging time for restaurants,” VinZant said.
The places he either creates or buys, he said, tend to be places he knows and loves, legacy eateries that already bring with them strong, dedicated followings. That includes Bo Ling’s on the Plaza where he regularly used to dine. And Trio, with its sophisticated art deco feel and where a pianist plays a grand piano in the dining room.
“If you like it, it’s easy to be passionate about it,” VinZant said. “If you’re passionate about it, you want to spend time there, and you want to work on it, and that tends to resolve in success.”
It includes Waldo Pizza, an institution for 39 years.
“My wife and I, we lived at 66th (Street) and Brookside Road. We’ll never forget walking with our 3-year-old to Waldo Pizza on Thursday nights to grab pizza and a beer,” VinZant recalled. “Those are some of our formative memories. When I was asked to purchase it, it was a dream come true for me.”
He said he also looks for a restaurant’s “durable advantage,” a term that describes the qualities or aspects of a business — such as its brand recognition, its following, its costs, its literal place on the map — that might allow it to perform long-term or even be duplicated.
“One thing that we talk about, that I’m very focused on, is creating concepts that we see as being thematically true,” VinZant said. “That is a restaurant that knows what is it. It probably wouldn’t make sense to anyone else, but that’s when the people, the team, the ambience, the food, menu and the beverage — everything from cocktails to wine — when it all matches and it’s all appropriate to each other.”
Football, friends and ‘funny drive’
Few who have known VinZant long are surprised at his success.
Born in Wichita, he is the middle of five children, with sisters, Sarah and Emily, above him, and sister, Allyson and brother, Ben, below. His parents, Whitney and Beth VinZant still reside in Wichita. His dad was a physician. VinZant’s sister, Emily VinZant, who is also a doctor — medical director of the Hutchinson Correctional Facility — said her brother “had a passion for excellence and excelling from when he was young.”
He came by it naturally.
“I think if you understand my family,” she said, “You would understand that — because my dad was such a super-hard worker — that ability to work our rears off and continue excelling is just in our family.
“We all have this funny drive, ‘If I can do this, what can I do next?’ And Whit, I mean, he’s probably the pinnacle of that in our family. . . He’s always pushing to the next level.”
His other drive? “His family and loyalty to other people,” Emily VinZant said. His kryptonite, she said, is “failure. Letting other people down.”
Case in point: VinZant was in third grade, age 8 or 9, when he first met Corey Gonzalez. They both played football, basketball and baseball.
“He came on to my playground and stole my thunder,” Gonzalez recalled. They became and remained best friends. Years later, in 2009, as VinZant was contemplating the launch of Louie’s Wine Dive in Des Moines, he called his friend to join him. Gonzalez, chief operating officer of W. VinZant Restaurants, has been with him ever since.
“He’s got your back. He’ll take care of you. He does it now with our team,” Gonzalez said. “They’re like family to him.”
At Kapaun Mt. Carmel Catholic High School, VinZant, class of 2000, became the quarterback of the football team. As a junior, he made All-City.
At graduation, he headed to North Carolina’s Wake Forest University, where he studied business and finance, not 100% sure exactly where it would take him.
“I had a difficult time, you know, really knowing what I wanted to do even after I graduated,” VinZant said. For a brief time he traded securities. “It wasn’t my calling.”
In high school, however, he worked at Papa John’s Pizza. In college, he apprenticed with an Applebee’s franchise, where the mixture of restaurants and finance and marketing struck a chord.
He took a risk.
“I was entrepreneurial by nature,” VinZant said.
Barely out of college, age 23, he approached the Old Chicago Pizza company and applied to buy a franchise.
“They looked at this young guy and they said, ‘We’re not going to give it you,’” VinZant recalled.
He persisted over nine months. In that time, he did research, he recalled, doing a regression analysis of the pizza chain’s franchises and discovering that those near military bases, including the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs and the one in Wichita near McConnell Air Force Base, did better than others.
He presented his findings.
“I opened my first Old Chicago (in 2005) right across the street from the Tinker Air Base in Oklahoma City. You know that old saying,” VinZant said. “‘Sales cures all.’ There’s a lot of truth in that.”
He grew successful, adding franchises, not just Old Chicago, but also Jimmy’s Egg Breakfast franchises. Then, in 2009, some bad luck lead to great luck at the Kentucky Derby.
Miss Kentucky, the derby and home
VinZant smiled telling the tale, although it unwound at a hard time: One year prior, the 2008 housing crisis had caused the U.S. economy to crash, dragging restaurant attendance with it, as millions lost their jobs.
“It was no joke,” he said. “It hit us hard. I was three or four years into owning our company at that time. We had debt. We had it all on the line, but we made it through.”
Other crises would hit, such as the COVID pandemic when, in March 2020, restaurants across the globe shuttered and, VinZant said, his revenue went to zero, just before, in the late summer, he bought Gram & Dun and Taco Republic.
“There was a tremendous amount of risk, and people were saying I was crazy. And I thought I was part crazy,” he said. “At that time, the Plaza was empty. But we believed the restaurant business would come back.”
On Saturday, May 2, 2009, he had taken another risky gamble. It was at the Kentucky Derby at Churchhill Downs in Louisville. He was with his buddies at a table that happened to be located not far from where the then-governor of Kentucky, Steve Beshear, was seated with the then-reigning Miss Kentucky, Emily Cox.
“I was with a group of 12 guys,” VinZant recalled. “I had bet on literally every race and had been the only one with my group who had lost every single race. I was the butt of every joke.”
When his friends asked him who he was betting on for the Derby race, he chose an unheralded bay gelding, a 50-1 longshot, named Mine That Bird, who covered the 1 1/4-mile track in 2:02.66 seconds, and remains one of the greatest underdogs to ever win the race.
“Everyone was going crazy,” VinZant said. People were clambering for a photo. VinZant asked Miss Kentucky to join in for the picture.
They spoke and, later, he saw her again out that evening.
“I asked her, you know, if she’d like to stay in touch. I think she was just being kind in saying yes,” VinZant said.
But they did, speaking over the next several months, while Cox attended pharmacy school to earn her Pharm. D. They wed four years later. Their daughters are ages 10 and 7, the boys are 4 and 3.
W. VinZant Restaurants has other holdings including the cocktail and social club Bemiston in St. Louis and Fresko Natural Foods and The Latin King, both in Des Moines. VinZant has sold or closed numerous restaurants over the years, including a Taco Republic in Kansas City, Kansas and a Louie’s Wine Dive in Coralville, Iowa.
Not everything works out.
“By the way, there’s no shame in that,” VinZant said. “I tell people all the time that we have restaurants that we’re going to lose. It’s part of the business. I do think there is a stigma against us restaurateurs. Everybody wants to talk about closing. The reality is that there are businesses that close all the time.
“They just aren’t part of the community the way restaurants are.”
VinZant, who moved to the Kansas City area in 2011, said he intends to remain part of the community.
“I live here, man. This is my town,” he said. “I see the people who dine at my restaurants at my kids’ schools every day, literally. We make sure we take good care of them. Doing the right thing.”
This story was originally published April 13, 2026 at 6:00 AM.
