Food hall closed last year on KC’s Country Club Plaza. Here’s the plan for what’s next
A lot of hotels carve out space for a restaurant or bar. Cascade Hotel, at 4600 Wornall Road on the Country Club Plaza, opened in late 2023 with a different proposition: a food hall.
But Strang Chef Collectives, which leased that food hall, closed in December after just a year. The two-floor space — which includes indoor-outdoor seating, four food stalls and two bars — has sat empty since.
Now the hotel has taken operations in-house, said Cascade’s director of outlets Eric Willey. His vision is to keep the space a food hall but “evolve that model a little bit.”
Specifically: more of an emphasis on established operators (as opposed to startup/food-truck vendors) and a hybrid approach to service.
“We’re planning to offer counter service like you find at normal food halls, but also tableside service and reservations,” Willey said. “You’ll be able to come in and order from a server from any of the four food stalls, and you can mix and match between them. It’s a way of offering more of a communal dining experience as opposed to everybody running around and waiting in different lines.”
The food vendors brought in by Strang Hall — Verde, Parma, Gasthaus, Khai-noy — were not well-known Kansas City brands. Willey imagines the revamped space, which he has renamed Plaza Provisions, as a canvas for local restaurants with a little more name recognition to try out a casual concept, or to open a Plaza outpost with a relatively low barrier to entry.
“The main cost for a lot of restaurants getting up and going is equipment, and we have all that already,” Willey said. “We have a huge central kitchen, coolers, walk-in freezers — we literally have pots and pans ready to go. And we’re doing license agreements where it’s a percentage of sales. So there’s no base rent. They grow, we grow.”
Willey said Plaza Provisions could open as soon as they enlist up a few more vendors. He said he is close to signing one food stall tenant (“a local restaurant that doesn’t do breakfast but is going to do it here”) and another local distillery that will license out one of the two bars. But otherwise there is room at the inn.
“I went out for lunch my first day working on the Plaza, and there’s not much unless you want to sit down and pay $30 for food,” Willey said. “I think there’s people who live and work down here who want a space where you can get a good lunch, dinner, or breakfast for under $20.”
