XO HiFi

XO HiFi is Kansas City’s first Japanese-inspired “listening bar” — an all-seated Westside room at 709 W 17th St where the sound system is the point: vinyl records played straight through on horn-driven, high-efficiency speakers, paired with Japanese-inspired cocktails, natural wine, and small snacks. Opened June 2024 by a local independent team, walk-in only, no reservations. Owner-operated, single-location, independent — Tier 1.¹²

| Corporate parent | None — independent (no chain / no sibling-brand parent) |¹² | | Notable | Horn-driven hi-fi vinyl system; all-seated (no standing room); walk-in only, no reservations; ~66 seats indoor+patio; guest DJs |² |

Description

XO HiFi is a Japanese-style listening bar on Kansas City’s Westside, at 709 W 17th St. Billed as the city’s first venue of its kind, it is built around the ritual of high-fidelity playback — records are sourced from the owners’ and community members’ personal collections and, in the listening-bar tradition, an album is allowed to play through rather than cut between tracks.¹² The room is all-seated: “We’re an all-seated bar — no standing room inside,” co-owner Jordan Hubner told The Pitch, with roughly 66 seats across the interior and patio.²

The drink program pairs Japanese-inspired cocktails — including zero-proof and low-ABV builds — with natural wine, overseen by wine director Richard Garcia, who previously owned the Kansas City natural-wine shop Big Mood.² The food is a short menu of Japanese-leaning snacks made for sharing, developed by James Beard-nominated chef Johnny Leach of The Town Company: pork katsu, a nori egg-salad sandwich, rotating rice bowls, and mochi chocolate cookies.¹ Music runs exclusively from vinyl — jazz, soul, rock — with guest DJs on a recurring weeknight.¹² Seating is first-come, first-served; no reservations.³

Ownership and history

XO opened the weekend of June 15, 2024.¹ The principals are Mitchell Foster, Will Minter (who serves as music director), and Jordan Hubner (director of operations), with Noah Manos owning the building that houses the bar.¹ The concept grew out of the founders’ interest in the Japanese listening-bar tradition; Foster framed the origin to Kansas City magazine: “Back in the ’60s, the Japanese were very isolationists… these listening bars were where people could come in and hear music from all over the world.”¹

The venture is stitched from established Kansas City hospitality hands: wine director Richard Garcia previously owned Big Mood Natural Wines in KC, and the food menu was built by Johnny Leach, the James Beard-nominated chef also associated with The Town Company.²¹ It is an independent, single-location operation with no chain or national-brand parent.¹

The specific KC birthplace/roots of each principal are not spelled out in the available sources (“), but the ownership group is a local, owner-operated independent with visible ties to the KC food-and-drink scene (Big Mood, The Town Company) — see the Tier note below.

Menu

Last verified: 2026-08-13 · Source: first-party site checked and found to publish no menu; item names below are press-sourced · URL: https://www.xohifi.com/ · Confidence: Medium (item names confirmed in named press; no prices are published anywhere first-party)

⚠ XO HiFi publishes no menu. A full first-party sweep on 2026-08-13 found the official site consists of exactly three pages — home, gallery, and reservations — per its own sitemap; there is no menu page and no menu image.⁴⁵ The Internet Archive holds no menu URL for the domain either, so this is not a recently-dropped menu.⁶ The Instagram bio likewise lists only the categories “records // bites // cocktails // natural wine” with no menu link.⁷ No prices for any item are published by the business through any first-party channel.

Items below are named in first-hand press coverage of the bar, not on a published menu, and carry no prices. Treat as an indicative list of the format, not a current menu.

Food — snacks (menu built by chef Johnny Leach)

• Pork katsu¹
• Nori egg-salad sandwich¹
• Rotating rice bowls¹
• Mochi chocolate cookies¹

Drink

• Japanese-inspired cocktails — including zero-proof and low-ABV builds.²
• Cocktails on tap⁸
• Natural / low-intervention wine — program overseen by wine director Richard Garcia.²
• Beer⁸
• Cider⁹

Format (not a menu item, recorded for accuracy)

• All-seated bar/restaurant; first-come, first-served; no reservations.⁴
• Vinyl-only music program; albums played through.¹²
• Gift cards sold through the venue’s own Square store.¹⁰

Site: xohifi.com — no menu is published there.

Links

• Website: https://www.xohifi.com/[^site]
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/xo.hifi/
• Phone: (816) 603-1644³
• Email: xoxo.kcmo@gmail.com³

Hours

Sun–Thu 4:00 PM–11:00 PM; Fri–Sat 4:00 PM–12:00 AM; occasional weekend daytime service 11:00 AM–3:00 PM. Walk-in only, no reservations.³

See also

• Registry

Sources

Disputes

ESP / bar-program relationship — partially corroborated (2026-08-13). City Lifestyle states that “ESP also manages the bar program at XO,” which gives the earlier “esp” snippet a named, sourced form.⁸ This is a management/programming relationship as described, not evidence of corporate ownership, and the Tier 1 independent reading is unchanged.

(Note: an early source snippet paired XO with a Denver bar “esp”; the direct KC coverage — Pitch, KC magazine — describes XO as an independent KC venture with no named sibling/parent, so the local-independent reading is used here. “ if a formal sibling relationship is later confirmed.)

Footnotes

1. “Opening This Weekend: A Japanese-Inspired Hifi Cocktail Lounge” — Kansas City magazine (accessed 2026-07-16) — Confirms: opened weekend of June 15, 2024; principals Mitchell Foster, William Minter, Jordan Hubner, and building owner Noah Manos; KC’s first Japanese-style listening bar; chef Johnny Leach (James Beard-nominated, The Town Co.) menu (pork katsu, nori egg salad sandwich, rotating rice bowls, mochi chocolate cookies); vinyl-only jazz/soul/rock; Foster quote on Japanese listening-bar history. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵

2. “Westside bar XO HiFi pairs music to cocktails for a first class listening experience” — The Pitch KC (accessed 2026-07-16) — Confirms: co-owner Jordan Hubner (director of operations), Will Minter (music director); wine director Richard Garcia (formerly owned Big Mood Natural Wines); chef Johnny Leach (The Town Company) built the food menu; all-seated, ~66 seats indoor+patio; horn-driven high-efficiency speakers; Japanese-inspired cocktails incl. zero-proof/low-ABV, natural wine, Japanese snacks; Westside; “no standing room inside”; guest DJs. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹

3. XO HiFi — official site (accessed 2026-07-16) — Confirms: 709 W 17th St, Kansas City, MO; all-seated bar/restaurant, first-come first-served, no reservations; hours (Sun–Thu 4–11, Fri–Sat 4–12, floating weekend 11–3); phone (816) 603-1644; email xoxo.kcmo@gmail.com. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

4. XO HiFi — official site (accessed 2026-08-13) — Confirms: still live; address 709 W 17th St; hours sun–thurs 4–11pm, fri/sat 4–12am, “floating hours” saturday/sunday 11am–3pm; phone (816) 603-1644; email xoxo.kcmo@gmail.com; “we are an all seated bar/restaurant and we seat at a first come, first served basis. we do not take reservations.” No menu is published on the site. (The site’s /reservations page is an unedited Squarespace demo template still showing placeholder text — “123 Demo St, New York, NY” — so it should not be read as a source for hours or location.) ↩ ↩²

5. XO HiFi — official sitemap (accessed 2026-08-13) — Confirms: the site contains exactly three pages: /home, /reservations, /gallery. No menu page exists. ↩

6. Internet Archive CDX index for xohifi.com (queried 2026-08-13) — Confirms: no archived menu URL for the domain; the absence of a published menu is long-standing, not a recent removal. ↩

7. XO HiFi — official Instagram (bio text read via search index 2026-08-13; Instagram is not directly machine-fetchable) — Confirms: bio reads “kcmo records // bites // cocktails // natural wine 709 w 17th st”; hours matching the official site; no menu link. ↩

8. “XO Hifi” — City Lifestyle (accessed 2026-08-13) — Confirms: cocktails on tap, beer, and a natural wine list; states that ESP manages the bar program at XO. ↩ ↩² ↩³

9. “A Kansas City Garage Reborn as XO, a Bar for Listening” — In Sheep’s Clothing HiFi (accessed 2026-08-13) — Confirms: 709 W. 17th Street; highballs, natural wine, cider, beer, well-crafted cocktails and low-intervention wine. ↩

10. XO HiFi gift cards — Square storefront linked from the official site (accessed 2026-08-13) — Confirms: the venue sells gift cards through its own Square account (first-party). No food or drink items are sold through it. ↩