Since 2021, Thai Zappz has served up popular Thai dishes in southern Overland Park.
As the locally owned restaurant nears its official fifth birthday in November, it will have more in store than the celebration of a milestone. It will have a new home, in a new Johnson County city.
This fall, Thai Zappz will trade its Overland Park location for a new one further west in Olathe.
Thai Zappz is moving to 111 N. Parker St.
- The restaurant will take over a space at the West Market shopping center, just off Parker and Santa Fe streets in Olathe.
- There, it will operate near the Price Chopper grocery store and Starbucks shopping center.
- Thai Zappz’s former Overland Park home was at 14893 Metcalf Ave.
Thai Zappz serves “authentic” Thai cuisine
The restaurant’s menu serves a variety of Thai dishes, such as pad thai, khao soi, cashew stir fry and tom yum soup.
“We try to distinguish our Thai food from the rest of (other nearby Thai restaurants),” said manager J.C. Presley, who runs the restaurant alongside the owner and his wife, Kay Nanakorn. “We try to introduce Thai street food; that’s our main kind of selling point here.”
While the Overland Park restaurant is exclusively table service, the new Olathe location will be sort of a hybrid model. Customers will order at the counter, find a table, and then servers will bring their orders out when they’re ready.
The goal there, Presley said, is that their restaurant can offer more of a family-friendly, street-style vibe; a pivot away from some of Johnson County’s more upscale Thai options.
“We have a lot of families that bring kids in and enjoy our food,” he said. “We’re very casual dining, and we’re gonna keep the same similar style over in Olathe.”
Thai Zappz aims to move before the end of 2026
The decision to relocate came, in part, from the restaurant’s current visibility in Overland Park.
Tucked in a shopping center off 149th Street and Metcalf Avenue, behind an O’Reilly Auto Parts store, its customers have had to know where to find Thai Zappz.
“We’ve been here quite some time, but we’re kind of hidden away,” Presley said. “We still have people just kind of discovering us (for the first time).”
At the same time, southern Overland Park also has several other Thai restaurants: nearby Pad Thai (soon to be Thai Story), and Tuk Tuk Thai off 135th Street and Antioch Road. The part of Olathe where Thai Zappz is headed, alternatively, feels more in need of more Thai options to the restaurant’s owners.
Still, Presley said, Thai Zappz has found its regulars in Overland Park: people that the owners remember by face and by name. Leaving them feels bittersweet, he said, but the next chapter will hopefully offer more traffic, new names and new faces.
“It is a busy plaza, so we have a really high hope in that one,” he said.
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