Married couple Adraina and Matt Holopirek are reopening Waterbird Coffee Company.
Adraina and Matt Holopirek
If ever there were a sign that downtown Kansas City needs a jolt — specifically from caffeine — it’d be from sitting inside a soon-to-reopen coffee shop, where multiple would-be customers tried to order themselves a cup of Joe.
News of Waterbird Coffee Company’s closure earlier this year seemingly hadn’t reached a handful of Kansas Citians one July afternoon, who walked into an under-construction café while it received a coat of paint from new owners Matt and Adraina Holopirek. The husband and wife told the guests to come back in mid-August.
“When we were in here for the very first time touring it, people just kept coming in,” Adraina said. “This is obviously a good location.”
The two took over ownership of the coffee shop earlier this year. They’re keeping it under the same name and at the same location, but they are making some tweaks to the interior and menu.
The venture of owning their own coffee shop will be a first for the couple. Adraina is the superintendent of Gardner’s parks and recreation department, and Matt was once an educator and worked in sales. It’s their first time running a café.
But the two love a cup of coffee. Three years ago they made it a weekly habit on Saturdays to try a new café or coffee shop in the Kansas City area, of which there are many.
Adraina prefers her caffeine beverages on the sweet side as a latte, while Matt enjoys cold brew and drip. Those forms of java will make the menu, as will other coffee house staples, when Waterbird reopens this summer.
The Holopireks found a coffee roaster, Foxen Coffee out of Monett, to use in the shop for both hot and iced beverages. They’ll carry signature and seasonal lattes, including drinks that were popular during Waterbird’s past life, like the butterscotch and brown sugar cinnamon lattes.
For the non-coffee drinkers, there’s something for them, too. The menu will feature hot and iced teas, like matcha and chai. But the Holopireks are also bringing in new beverages that weren’t served before at the old Waterbird, specifically their version of energy refreshers and lemonade-based drinks found at other coffee shops like Starbucks and Dunkin’.
Adraina said there will be two drinks with a lemonade base and two with an energy base, and they’re working with homemade fruit syrups like watermelon, peach, blackberry and strawberry to make combination flavors. Those drinks specifically will come canned, sealed in store by a machine the couple is bringing with them.
Another menu item that’s making a comeback is Scratch KC baked goods, like their popular homemade Pop-Tarts, cookies and muffins. For a savory item, the KC wholesale bakery is also supplying Waterbird with breakfast burritos and bagels.
The space already does a decent job of feeling warm, thanks to nearly floor-to-ceiling windows that brighten up the shop — and its convenient location at the corner of McGee and 12th streets, one of only a few coffee shops available for nearby county and city workers.
But the Holopireks are working hard to add touches that deliver an even more inviting message. They have added paint to the walls, brown and matcha green, to give the space a more traditional cozy coffee shop aesthetic to pare down the more industrial feel the shop once had. A message stenciled on the floor in front of the coffee counter reads “Come as you are,” a reference to one of Matt’s favorite Nirvana songs but a phrase that also serves as their mission.
“We really want to make everybody feel welcome,” Matt said. “What’s going to separate us is me as the owner being here 24/7 interacting with the customers, getting to know them by name and having conversations.”
To add to the welcoming atmosphere, there will be couches for guests to stay awhile, classic bistro-style tables for people to meet and bar-height chairs lined against the McGee Street-facing wall of windows for customers to work from Waterbird.
Once the Holopireks get settled, they eventually want to connect even more with the community through fun events that may even allow the shop to extend its hours every once in a while. But for now, they’ll set Waterbird’s hours from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily.
Prior to the Holopireks taking over the business, Waterbird opened in November 2022 by business partners Jamakee Blackburn and Brian Denman. But Denman left the business earlier this year to open another coffee concept, Apparition Coffee, a metal music-inspired spot that opened in June, and that’s when Blackburn put the business up for sale.
Katelyn Umholtz is The Star’s Food Insider and covers Kansas City’s restaurant scene and food and beverage news. She comes to Kansas City from Boston, where she was an award-winning food and restaurant reporter for Boston.com and the Boston Globe Media Partners. She has worked in newsrooms across the country for nearly a decade as an education journalist, breaking news reporter and editor. Katelyn is a graduate of the University of Georgia, where she studied journalism.
