This profile is in active compilation — some details are awaiting a cited source.

Café Europa Gourmet Market & Bakery no longer operates under that name. The European-style market, café, and bakery began in 2001 as Europa! See the premise-correction note in the footer.**

Description

The Lemon Cake Bakery by Cafe Europa is Ben Cascio’s independently owned Leawood bakery and coffee shop at Mission Farms, and the continuation of the Café Europa business. The original operation opened in 2001 as Europa! Cafe in the Crestwood Shops on the Brookside edge of Kansas City, Missouri, trading as a European-style gourmet market, café, and bakery. Cascio bought it in 2016.1

In 2021 Cascio announced a relocation, saying the Crestwood building’s small footprint had long constrained the business — “we always struggled with how small the building’s footprint was.”23 The business moved less than a mile north to 4928 Main St in South Plaza, a roughly 5,000-square-foot former Kansas City Fire Department station (later a Planet Sub) with a dedicated lot and patio, and opened there as its flagship in 2022 with an enlarged kitchen and bakery, a bolstered market section carrying imported European goods, and a European kitchenware line.231 Cascio also pursued a second location in Leawood at Town Center Crossing; those plans fell through in 2023.24

The South Plaza flagship closed in summer 2023, after roughly two decades of the business overall.15 Cascio relaunched at smaller scale that November as The Lemon Cake Bakery by Cafe Europa, taking the former Boutique Chic storefront at Mission Farms, next to Tavern.5 The new shop keeps the baked goods that built the Café Europa name — the signature lemon cake above all — plus a full coffee and tea bar, and drops the sandwiches, salads, and other savory service of the old café.54

Two other businesses now hold Café Europa’s former addresses: the Crestwood space at 323 E 55th St became bacaro-primo in spring 2023, and the South Plaza firehouse at 4928 Main St was leased to New York Butcher Shoppe, a South Carolina–based butcher/restaurant/wine bar chain, for its first Kansas City location.1

Relationship to bacaro-primo

The two businesses share a building, not an owner. Café Europa occupied 323 E 55th St in the Crestwood Shops from 2001 until its 2022 move to South Plaza; Todd Schulte and Cory Dannehl’s Bacaro Primo opened in that vacated space in spring 2023.12 There is no ownership, staffing, or brand link between them on the record. The bacaro-primo page’s “former Café Europa space” line refers to this tenancy sequence.

Last verified: 2026-08-14 · Source: the operator’s own site (thelemoncakebakery.com, re-scraped 2026-08-14), its two published sitemaps, the retired first-party order page in the Internet Archive, the Mission Farms tenant page, and local press · Confidence: Medium for item names, none for prices — the business is confirmed operating and the items below are documented, but The Lemon Cake Bakery publishes no priced menu on any surface it controls, so no price on this page is first-party and none is asserted.

Documented ceiling — do not re-spend research time on these surfaces. Re-checked 2026-08-14, unchanged from the 2026-08-13 pass:

  • thelemoncakebakery.com — a three-page GoDaddy brochure site (home, photo gallery, about) per its own sitemap.website.xml (lastmod 2026-05-13). Scraped in full 2026-08-14: zero price strings, no menu page, no ordering link, no item list. The tagline is the closest thing to a menu — “Savor our artisanal cakes, and fresh pastries daily” and “confections, teas and gifts.”6
  • thelemoncakebakery.com/sitemap.ols.xml — resolves to a mysimplestore.com storefront that is an unused platform template, not this bakery’s shop: its category list is backpacks, socks, blankets, coasters, phone cases, garage/shop shelving, wire mesh, beams, uprights and racking (all lastmod 2024-09-09). Nothing bakery-related. Do not mistake this for a live store.7
  • Internet Archive — the retired first-party order page (/place-an-order, capture 2025-02-09) carries no prices; it reads “Please call the bakery to place an order 913.283.7476.” The retired /favorites, /coffee-&-tea, and /retail pages are image-based and yield no machine-readable prices.8 The Archive route, which recovered menus for other Registry pages, is exhausted here.
  • Mission Farms tenant page — hours and contact only, no prices.9
  • Facebook and Instagram are the operator’s most active surfaces but are login-gated/scraper-refused; no attempts were spent there.

What would actually resolve this: an in-store photo of the case/price board, a phone call to (913) 283-7476 (the operator’s own retired order page directs customers to call for pricing, which suggests pricing may be quote-based for whole cakes), or a logged-in session against the bakery’s Facebook or Instagram posts. Another web sweep will not.

No aggregator prices are recorded here per Registry policy.

Items on record (press-sourced item names, prices)

Item names below come from local press coverage of the bakery’s opening, not from an operator price list. No description here is the operator’s own wording for that item, so none is quoted as such.

  • Lemon cake — the signature item, carried over from Café Europa.51
  • Carrot cake5
  • Chocolate cupcakes5
  • Italian cookies5
  • Brownies4
  • Coffee and tea bar — full range of coffee and tea drinks.5

Items on the Café Europa bakery menu before the 2023 closure (historical, unpriced): bourbon pecan, French coconut, sour cream apple, and chocolate chess pies; brownies; lemon cake; cupcakes; tarts; cookies.3

See also

Sources

Footnotes

  1. Kansas City Star (syndicated via AOL) — “Iconic KC cafe closed in 2023. Now a restaurant, wine bar and butcher shop will move in” (December 31, 2024) — asserts: Café Europa began in 2001 as Europa! Cafe in Crestwood Shops; Ben Cascio purchased it in 2016; relocated to the former firehouse at 4928 Main St in 2022; closed summer 2023 after two decades; New York Butcher Shoppe (South Carolina–based, founded 1999, 34 locations) leased the 4928 Main space; Cascio launched The Lemon Cake Bakery in Leawood serving Café Europa’s signature lemon cake. Accessed 2026-08-13. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  2. The Pitch — “Café Europa moves to South Plaza” (September 1, 2021) — asserts: move from 323 E 55th St (Crestwood Shops) to 4928 Main St, a former KCFD station and Planet Sub; owner Ben Cascio; the concept’s inspiration in his grandparents’ Armourdale (Kansas City, Kansas) grocery store destroyed by the 1951 flood; planned staffing roughly doubling to ~20; expanded kitchen, bakery, market section with imported European goods, and European kitchenware; a second location purchased at a former Zoës Kitchen in Leawood’s Town Center Crossing. Accessed 2026-08-13. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  3. The Pitch — “Café Europa, once a Crestwood Shops staple, finds a new flagship home” (August 8, 2022) — asserts: the 4928 Main St flagship opened with a dedicated parking lot, patio, and substantially more indoor space than Crestwood; owner Ben Cascio; Cascio quoted on the Crestwood footprint constraint; bakery items including bourbon pecan, French coconut, sour cream apple and chocolate chess pies, brownies, lemon cake, cupcakes, tarts, and cookies; a further Town Center location described as forthcoming. Accessed 2026-08-13. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  4. Johnson County Post — “Kansas City’s Café Europa coming to Leawood under new name” (August 4, 2023) — asserts: after the 2023 closure of the Kansas City flagship, Café Europa would reopen in Leawood as The Lemon Cake Bakery; the earlier Town Center Crossing plans fell through in summer 2023; brownies and lemon cake among the goods carried over; scaled-back menu and square footage by design. Accessed 2026-08-13. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  5. Johnson County Post — “Kansas City café reopening in Johnson County with focus on sweets” (November 28, 2023) — asserts: The Lemon Cake Bakery soft-opened late November 2023 at 10683 Mission Rd, Leawood (Mission Farms), in the former Boutique Chic storefront next to Tavern; owner Ben Cascio; hours; menu of lemon cake, carrot cake, chocolate cupcakes, Italian cookies and a full range of coffee and tea drinks; savory items dropped; Café Europa operated two decades in the Brookside area before moving to South Plaza and closing in summer 2023; the earlier Town Center Crossing expansion attempt. Accessed 2026-08-13. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  6. The Lemon Cake Bakery — official site — asserts: business name, address 10683 Mission Road Leawood KS, phone (913) 283-7476, operating and holiday hours, description as artisanal cakes and fresh pastries with confections, teas and gift items; site sitemap (thelemoncakebakery.com, last modified 2026-05-13) shows only home, about, and photo-gallery pages — no menu or price list. Accessed 2026-08-13. ↩

  7. The Lemon Cake Bakery — store sitemap (fetched 2026-08-14) — asserts: the site’s online-store sitemap points at https://eb8bb4c3-5adc-475b-aacf-5c0e6b27eec5.mysimplestore.com, whose product categories are backpacks, socks, blankets, coasters, phone cases, garage/shop shelving, wire mesh, beams, uprights and racking (all lastmod 2024-09-09) — an unused platform template carrying no bakery products and no bakery prices. Accessed 2026-08-14. ↩

  8. Internet Archive Wayback Machine — retired first-party order page, thelemoncakebakery.com/place-an-order (capture 2025-02-09) — asserts: the business’s own former ordering page published no prices and directed customers to call the bakery at 913.283.7476; site footer copyright reads “The lemon cake bakery by Cafe Europa.” Retired first-party surface, dated. Accessed 2026-08-13; the /place-an-order path is absent from the site’s current sitemap as of 2026-08-14. ↩

  9. Mission Farms — tenant page, “The Lemon Cake Bakery” — asserts: current tenancy at Mission Farms; address 10683 Mission Road, Leawood, KS 66206; operating hours; phone 913-283-7476; website; the “by Cafe Europa” branding. Accessed 2026-08-13. ↩

See also

Categories

On the record — ks.city/registry/cafe-europa · record updated 2026-08-14