Blue Parkway Sun Fresh

Blue Parkway Sun Fresh is the full-service grocery store anchoring the Shops on Blue Parkway on Kansas City’s East Side, owned and operated since 2020 by the nonprofit community development corporation Community Builders of Kansas City.

Description

Blue Parkway Sun Fresh is a supermarket at 4209 E 50th Terrace, anchoring the Shops on Blue Parkway retail center on Kansas City’s East Side.¹² It trades under the Sun Fresh banner and is listed as one of three Sun Fresh stores in Kansas City alongside the Calle 18 and Chouteau locations.³ Hours listed by the store are Sunday through Saturday, 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.; the store email is kcsf246@kcsunfresh.com.¹

The store is one of the few full-line grocery stores in its part of the East Side, a point long-time customers have made in local coverage.⁴ Community Builders of Kansas City frames the store as part of an “eat well, live well” initiative in the urban core and as a way to keep neighborhood spending recirculating locally.²

The store’s Missouri primary alcohol licence is held by Blue Parkway Grocers LLC under the DBA “KC Sun Fresh on the Boulevard.”⁵

Community Builders also owned and operated the Sun Fresh at the Linwood Shopping Center at Linwood and Prospect, which closed in August 2025 and has since reopened under a different operator as United Market KC. A spokesperson for Mayor Quinton Lucas told KSHB that the city is not affiliated with the Blue Parkway store.⁴

Ownership and history

Community Builders of Kansas City established the grocery-anchored retail center on Blue Parkway in 2005, and owns the 150,000-square-foot Shops on Blue Parkway, the adjacent 69,000-square-foot office building in which CBKC is headquartered, and a 64-unit apartment building on the same campus.² CBKC is headquartered at 4001 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Suite 301, Kansas City, MO 64130.²

CBKC announced in May 2020 that it would become owner/operator of the store on June 30, 2020, following the retirement of the previous operator, and that the move was consistent with its model of developing and holding its real estate projects.² Among its first moves, CBKC hired John King as store director; the organization said King had worked nearly 20 years for one of the area’s largest supermarket systems, served as an operations supervisor for XPO Logistics, and previously owned a shopping and delivery service for more than five years.²

Emmet Pierson Jr. is president of CBKC.⁴

The year a Sun Fresh-banner store first opened at this address; the identity of the pre-2020 operator; whether John King remains store director; the wholesale supply agreement behind the Sun Fresh banner.

Links

• Website: https://www.mysunfresh.com/stores/blue-parkway
• Owner/operator: https://cb-kc.org/

Services

• Full-line grocery: the store operates as a conventional supermarket under the Sun Fresh banner, with a weekly ad published across the Sun Fresh chain site.³
• CBKC has stated an intent to accommodate community preferences on store product, customer experience and supporting services such as banking or pharmacy.²

Current department list (deli, bakery, pharmacy, floral) and whether any departments have been cut as part of the footprint reduction.

Sources

Footnotes

1. “Blue Parkway,” Sun Fresh store page (address, hours, phone, email). URL ↩ ↩²

2. “Change is Coming to Sun Fresh on Blue Parkway,” Community Builders of Kansas City press release, May 18, 2020. URL ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

3. “Sun Fresh: Home” (store locator listing Calle 18, Chouteau and Blue Parkway stores; weekly ad). URL ↩ ↩²

4. Lily O’Shea Becker, “Despite some empty shelves, Blue Parkway Sun Fresh is not closing,” KSHB 41, April 2026. URL ↩ ↩² ↩³

5. “Missouri Primary Alcohol Licenses,” Missouri Division of Alcohol and Tobacco Control open dataset (dataset id d9fr-pncw), retrieved August 26, 2026 — DBA “KC SUN FRESH ON THE BOULEVARD,” licensee “BLUE PARKWAY GROCERS LLC,” 4209 E. 50th Ter, Kansas City, MO 64130. URL ↩