To Alysha Khan and her family, the name of their new cafe (Te Amo, which translates to “I love you”) is more than just a name.

It’s also a mission statement for the family, who moved to the Kansas City area from Dallas in 2015. More than a decade later, Khan said, they’ve steadily built a life and a legacy in southern Overland Park.

Now this cafe is a love letter back to that community — and a new place for them to gather over a caffeinated beverage of choice.

“My parents just wanted a space for people, friends, family, to gather,” Khan said. “It was honestly just a place for us to see people come together in a way that is special.”

The new shop, Te Amo Cafe, celebrated its grand opening in southern Overland Park this past weekend.

Te Amo Cafe opened at 7932 W. 151st St.

• The cafe took over a space at the Stanley Square shopping center, just off U.S. Highway 69 and 151st Street.
• The space was previously occupied by a massage spa.
• Te Amo Cafe’s regular hours are 8:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and 10:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. Friday through Sunday.

Te Amo Cafe serves lattes, boba tea and more

The cafe serves a variety of milk and fruit boba teas, in flavors like watermelon, mango, honeydew, strawberry and taro.

On the coffee side, Te Amo also serves signature drinks like tiramisu cold brews and Biscoff lattes — in addition to simple classics like americanos and chai lattes.

“We want to keep with the trends, but also be different at the same time,” Khan said. “We don’t want to blend in with everyone else.”

The menu also offers a variety of flavored matcha teas and lemonades. With their drinks, customers can also enjoy sweets like slices of cheesecake or “croffles” (a hybrid of a croissant and waffle) with toppings like Oreos and berries.

Over the open counter, customers can watch as their drinks are prepared.

“We are focusing on the quality here being our first priority,” said Sabeen Khaliq, Khan’s mother and co-owner of the cafe. “There is no compromise on the quality.”

Turning the space into the cafe it is now took nearly a year. The family raised the ceiling to make the room feel more open, and they brought in a painter to create lush green walls and polished concrete floors.

“We wanted a lot of greenery,” Khan said. “We wanted it to look like a fresh space for you to go and just relax, but also a little more elegant.”

The family isn’t new to cafe ownership

Khan’s parents, Sabeen Khaliq and Mehtab Khan, already have experience in the food and drink world — including owning a local franchise of boba tea shop Fat Bee Cafe.

But this new chapter felt like a chance to bring something to Overland Park that they could craft on their own. By doing so, they said, they could offer something for everyone.

In fact, in the future, they plan to gather feedback from customers on their menu, so regulars can weigh in on what they’d like to see added.

“It’s not catered to a specific community or or (a certain) age group,” Khaliq said. “We are open with our menu as well. We’ll get the feedback and see what people want to add.”

After initially moving to Kansas City, Missouri, from Texas in 2015, the family relocated to Overland Park in 2019. Over the past eight years, Alysha said, the area surrounding their new shop off 151st Street and U.S. Highway 69 has become the center of their daily routines, from grocery trips and gas station stops to late night fast-food runs.

So putting down more roots at Stanley Square, right in the center of so many memories, made natural sense.

As the final strokes of paint went onto the walls and equipment turned on behind the counter last week, the excitement of preparing to open the doors to their community (and seeing their reactions) was hard to contain, Khan said.

“​​This has been something we’ve been imagining and transforming in our own minds for a long time,” she said. “For it to come out exactly how we wanted it to be, and even better, means so much to us.”

Want more food and drink news? McAlister’s Deli to expand in JoCo, targeting new Olathe location