Earlier this year, antique shop Unique Finds closed its doors in downtown Overland Park, marking the end of one long chapter as owner Bob Southard moved onto his next one.
But now, in the space off Santa Fe Drive, something new is preparing to take flight. If all goes according to plan, people will be sipping lattes, typing away on laptops and conversing with one another there by the fall.
Flight Crew Coffee, a coffee shop that got its start further west in Manhattan, Kansas, is taking over the space. Pending renovations, owner Heather Hnizdil aims to officially open the new spot by Nov. 1 — potentially with a soft opening in late October.
Flight Crew Coffee is coming to 8025 Santa Fe Drive
- The coffee shop is taking over a space just off Santa Fe Drive, near Thompson Park and Mediterranean eatery Hummus and Pita.
- Unique Finds occupied that space for roughly 20 years before it closed earlier this year.
- Once Flight Crew Coffee opens, its regular hours will be 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily.
Flight Crew Coffee offers “coffee in good company”
The menu at Flight Crew offers a variety of flight-themed drinks. For the upcoming fall, for example, that will include the “Emily Warner” (a pumpkin latte named after the historic female pilot) and the “Bee Haydu” (a chai with spiced apple and caramel, named after the World War II pilot).
Flight Crew’s coffee drinks are made from beans roasted by Missouri-based Post Coffee Company. In addition to coffee, Flight Crew serves other treats like matcha lattes, flavored sodas and baked goods like homemade cinnamon streusel coffee cake.
Alongside Flight Crew’s own homemade pastries, Hnizdil hopes to partner with Kansas City, Missouri’s Morning Rounds Bakery to serve some of their baked goods as well. To play into Flight Crew’s aviation theme, she’s also exploring a potential partnership with Kansas City’s Trans World Airlines Museum to bring more aviation history into the shop through talks or events.
The space itself is currently in the throes of transforming from a retail space to one suited for serving coffee.
The former checkout counter for Unique Finds has been torn out and will be replaced with a wall; one with a small kitchen behind it. The shop will have some “work-friendly” tables and chairs and some more comfortable seating, an outdoor patio that faces Thompson Park (which has its own aviation theme from Overland Park’s early history in aviation), and a large airplane mural.
As for the shop’s aviation theme, Hnizdil said it’s really about more about what the planes represent; connecting people to different places and different people.
“I love being part of the community and kind of want (the coffee shop) to be like your home away from home,” she said. “Everyone has an interesting story, and it’s so cool to get to know the people that you live around. You just never know what some people have seen or done.”
This marks the first Flight Crew Coffee in Johnson County
It’s a two-for-one year in terms of milestones for Flight Crew Coffee. Its flagship location in Manhattan, Kansas, just turned five.
The expansion of the concept into Johnson County had been a year in the making when the Unique Finds spot became available. After months of searching, Hnizdil said she knew downtown Overland Park was the right place for Flight Crew to land.
“I was specifically looking for that downtown feel, that small town-within-a-town kind of feel,” she said. “To me, that’s what downtown Overland Park has.”
Even before she owned her own coffee shop, Hnizdil said, she’d long been drawn to coffee shops herself; not just the coffee they serve, but the community that tends to be fostered there (hence her own shop’s motto, “coffee in good company.”)
That’s what she hopes to give to people who come through the doors of Flight Crew too, whether they’re there to grab a quick on-the-go latte, get some work done on their own, or chat with their friends for a couple of hours.
“While I believe that we have a really, really good product, I also care much more about customer service and connecting people in the community than actually coffee,” she said. “Coffee for me is just the vehicle that is doing the connecting.”
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