Kansas City restaurant struggles through COVID. Then it’s ‘taken out by a sewer’
Kansas City’s original T.Loft location will not reopen.
The restaurant, in State Line Commons at 8025 State Line Road, has a “closed for maintenance issues” sign on the front door, as well as on its website. But it also has an “available” for lease sign.
T.Loft opened in spring 2013 with such items as the “Mean and Clean” detox fresh juice drink, smoothies, coconut almond tea latte, and sweet potato brownies (a bestseller).
Its protein balls and spicy chicken bowl were a favorite of former Royals first baseman Eric Hosmer.
It later expanded.
Stacy Plamondon purchased the three Kansas City area T.Loft restaurants in April 2019, along with a license agreement for the Lawrence location, and was building up the business.
Then the COVID-19 shutdown started.
She closed the Country Club Plaza location in May 2020 when the lease was close to expiring. Then, just days later, a window on the restaurant was smashed sometime during the time of the protests over the death of George Floyd.
The Leawood location never reopened after the shelter-in-place orders, and she worked with the landlord to buy out the lease.
She concentrated on the State Line location, but then work on the strip center’s sewer line caused a backup into the restaurant, and it took from August 2020 to April for repairs to be made, she said.
“Because of COVID it was hard to get the materials, the workers. I didn’t want to take out more loans and set myself up for failure,” Plamondon said. “I was already in debt from buying the business, then to be taken out by a sewer. It was really sad. It basically ended me.”
She still has three years left on her lease and is working with the State Line landlord.
A spokesman for the landlord said T.Loft did well in the space and they expected it to reopen.
Plamondon misses providing a positive workplace where her employees were “valued and empowered.” But she still sees some former customers at her new job at Kitch, which makes healthy prepared meals in Prairie Village.
This story was originally published October 6, 2021 at 11:57 AM.