WICHITA — Donut Whole owners Angela Mallory and Michael Carmody are working on a new venture next to their original one at 1720 E. Douglas.
They plan to open a tea bar in April.
“We don’t have anything like that here,” Mallory says.
She says tea bars are all the rage across the country.
Mallory and Carmody opened the Donut Whole in early 2009.
“We’ve kind of hit our stride here and (are) looking to stretch out a little bit,” Carmody says.
He says they’ll sell “every sort of tea that we can lay our hands on.”
That includes chai, boba and loose-leaf teas.
The tea bar, which hasn’t been named yet, won’t have retail sales.
Though the bar will be connected to the Donut Whole, it will be separate.
“It’ll have its own personality,” Carmody says.
The new business will be in 1,800 square feet, which is smaller than the Donut Whole’s 3,000 square feet.
Mallory says the interior will have more of a “Zen-type decor,” with a streamlined, calming atmosphere.
Though the tea bar will primarily focus on tea, it also will serve cereal, toast, artisan breads and lots of toppings, such as “fancy jam,” as Mallory says.
“It’ll be our first kind of savory offering really,” Carmody says.
While the two are focused on opening the tea bar, they’ll eventually turn their focus back to doughnuts.
“We’d really like to eventually open a shop in Lawrence,” Carmody says.
Manhattan also is a possibility one day. Carmody says neither city has a downtown doughnut shop.
Future doughnut shops will have to wait, though, until the tea bar is firmly established, Carmody says.
“We try to make sure we get all our ducks in a row before we move on to something else.”