It’s been nearly a decade since tea brand Teavana occupied a corner space on the upper level of the Oak Park Mall.
Their departure from the mall left Johnson County’s tea enthusiasts searching elsewhere. Now that Kansas City, Missouri-based Dragonfly Tea Zone has officially taken over the space, owner Doug Phung said customers have been excited to get their fix closer to home again.
The tea shop soft-opened earlier this month and celebrated its grand opening this past weekend.
Dragonfly Tea Zone is on the mall’s upstairs level
- The tea shop will move into a space on the upper level of the Oak Park Mall, near jewelry store Zales and the food court.
- Teavana occupied that space for roughly a decade before the brand closed all of its stores roughly eight years ago.
- Dragonfly Tea Zone operates under standard Oak Park Mall hours — 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday.
Dragonfly Tea Zone offers more than 130 teas
The shop’s bubble tea menu offers a variety of flavors — some of which include taro, honeydew, mango passionfruit and strawberry.
In addition to boba tea, the menu also includes fruit smoothies, which Phung said tend to be a big draw at Dragonfly Tea Zone’s other locations.
Aside from the café menu, the Overland Park shop offers several jars of loose leaf herbal and black teas for customers to take home by the ounce — from peppermint and apple cinnamon to wild strawberry and rooibos vanilla chai.
Though Dragonfly Tea Zone’s other stores’ loose leaf tea stations are self-serve, the Overland Park store offers a “white-glove” service with staff on hand to help customers choose teas and answer any questions they have about them.
For brewers at home, the store also sells at-home equipment like porcelain teapots and matcha whisks.
“We keep our store at high-level standards,” Phung said. “Everything’s clean, and everything’s great quality.”
This marks Dragonfly’s Johnson County debut
The “early infancy” of Phung’s idea to open a bubble tea shop started after Phung visited California, where he found a wealth of bubble tea shops to choose from.
Phung began selling tea at Kansas City’s River Market (then called Boba Express) in 2003.
At the time, Phung said the menu wasn’t super extensive — just a handful of bubble teas and smoothies.
Since then, Phung said the shop has grown its menu extensively and worked up a loyal following on the Missouri side of the metro, with three more storefronts in addition to the River Market kiosk.
He’d been thinking about bringing the concept across the state line for a while, and finding a space where another tea shop had previously occupied felt like a “perfect match” to him.
So far, he said customers seem to agree.
“Every week we’ve been growing our following,” he said. “It’s been great.”
If all goes according to plan, Phung said, then, the Oak Park Mall shop won’t be the last that Johnson County sees of Dragonfly Tea Zone.
“We would hopefully like to reach more of the Kansas area,” he said. “A lot of folks know us from Kansas City, Missouri, already because we have other shops there, so we’re hoping to get folks in Kansas to know our brand as well.”
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