What’s the best coffee shop in Kansas City? Announcing the winner of our bracket

In February 2022, we asked you to nominate your favorite coffee shops to help us launch our Kansas City Coffee Shop Bracket. Week by week, your votes narrowed the field.

For several rounds, Messenger Coffee Co., with multiple locations, looked to be headed to victory. But it was knocked out just before the final round, when newcomer Cafe Ollama and mainstay Broadway Cafe and Roasting Co. rose to the top.

And now the winner: Broadway Cafe.

“It feels great. I’m just so grateful for the support. It’s an honor,” said Sara Honan, co-owner with Jon Cates. “There are so many great coffee shops and a lot of great little independents. We just try to keep doing what we are doing and doing it well.”

When Broadway Cafe opened back in 1992 it was just a cool place to hang out in Westport.

Founder Honan wanted to keep it as fresh and local as possible, so she used beans from coffee roasters in Kansas City and St. Louis. There were just a handful of roasters, and not a lot of coffee shops.

Cates came on as manager and barista, and soon a co-owner.

Then Starbucks set up shop next door. At the time an attorney for the chain said, “We disagree that this is a funeral march as far as (Broadway Cafe) is concerned.”

Honan and Cates didn’t want Starbucks to define Kansas City coffee. So they installed a roaster in the back.

Starbucks left Westport a decade later, and Broadway Cafe is still going strong. Its roasting operation expanded into its own space, then in 2007 its own building at 4012 Washington St., in the old Westport fire station No. 19.

The cafe menu includes coffee drinks, espressos, cold brew, chai tea and pastries baked in-house. But drip coffee and shots of espresso are the bestsellers.

“We try to keep it simple, stick to the basics of what people like, no blended drinks or frozen sweet drinks, things like that,” Honan said.

Beans are imported from major coffee growing regions such as Colombia, Costa Rica, Ethiopia and Mexico.

“The Indian coffee is kind of a unique one, not a lot of places have, and right now we have a coffee from Thailand that is a little more exotic,” Honan said. “Jon buys directly from the farmer, Norman Canales, in Nicaragua.”

She attributes the cafe’s success to the “great location” at 4106 Broadway Blvd., and a lot of hard work. Both the owners are on site daily. Some employees have been there for more than a decade.

Customers and employees “know exactly how they want their drink made,” she said. “We have amazing employees and customers, this great loyalty on both sides.”

The one-story brick building still has the same black and white checkerboard marble floor that it had at the opening, but the striped awnings in front have been replaced a couple of times. One day this past week, customers spread out with their laptops or happily chatted with the baristas.

“It’s very much a place that locals like to go,” Honan said. “Being in Westport we get a lot of out of town customers, too. But we always try to cater to the locals.”

Last month, when The Star asked for coffee shop nominations, nearly 900 readers submitted 92 entries. The praise for Broadway Cafe was plentiful.

“They have been doing it the best since specialty coffee became ‘a thing,’” wrote John Navarre of Kansas City.

“The best latte I’ve ever had in my life was at Broadway Roasting Co. Just a straight latte, nothing in it. As soon as I finished it, I bought another, which I’ve never done before,” said Wesley Slawson, who lives in the River Market area.

From those submissions, the 32 with the most nominations seeded Round 1 of the bracket. The field was narrowed over five rounds, with more than 7,000 readers weighing in. In the championship round, which ended last Sunday night, Broadway Cafe received 549 votes to Cafe Ollama’s 480.

Honan said she doesn’t plan to expand with more cafes, just to keep adding more clients for the coffee roasting side of the business — consumers as well as restaurants and offices.

It will ship anywhere in the U.S. But when some customers moved to South Korea and ordered some bags, the rate was “insane,” Honan said. She shipped the order at domestic shipping costs, eating the difference.

Her most difficult time during the last three decades was the pandemic.

The cafe was closed, as they waited for the staff of 20 to be vaccinated. But sales of to-go drinks and of whole bean coffee — online and at the counter — surged, as customers sheltered in place. It set up online “tip jars” for the baristas. They still wear masks.

“It was terrifying. You rethink your entire business. You were constantly thinking you were going to get sick or your employees were going to get sick, and then you are trying to get back open,” she said.

“I’m so grateful every day for the support we got. Obviously they were rooting for us.”

This story was originally published March 18, 2022 at 5:00 AM.