Kansas City, Kansas Black Restaurant Week (2026)

Kansas City, Kansas held its first Black Restaurant Week from 7 to 13 September 2026 — eleven Black-owned restaurants, organised by Visit KCK, the county’s nonprofit tourism organisation, with Kendon McClaine as co-organiser, and marked by a proclamation from Christal Watson, mayor and chief executive of the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas. Many participants offered meals at $9.13, a play on the 913 area code and on 913 Day, which falls on the week’s closing date. It ran weeks after severe storms had knocked out power across parts of the county, and supporting storm-affected businesses was part of its stated purpose.¹

Summary

The week was Kansas City, Kansas’s first dedicated Black Restaurant Week — distinct from the long-running metro-wide and national programs — and was scoped entirely to the Kansas side. Eleven Black-owned establishments took part across 7–13 September 2026. Its two stated aims were supporting Black entrepreneurs and amplifying businesses affected by recent severe storms.¹

The organising body is Visit KCK, the local nonprofit tourism organisation, and Christal Watson issued a proclamation recognising the restaurants’ contribution to the county’s cultural identity and economic vitality.² Co-organiser Kendon McClaine gave the reason for starting it as a question answered in the obvious direction: “More or less a why not. Over the last few years, there’s been an emergence of Black entrepreneurship in the KCK/Wyandotte County area.”³

The count may be twelve, not eleven. Every source read for this page says eleven participating restaurants, and the rosters in KCUR and KSHB each list eleven. A KCTV5 report of 2 September 2026 says eleven but lists twelve, the additional name being “The Village Cage.” The figure of eleven is used throughout this page because it is what the sources state; the twelfth name is recorded here so it is not lost, and neither the count nor the extra participant is resolved.

Organiser attribution splits three ways across the coverage — KCUR names an individual organiser, KSHB names Visit KCK as the organising body with Kendon McClaine as co-organiser, and a third group of reports attributes it differently again. This page follows KSHB because it names an accountable organisation, and prints the alternatives rather than choosing silently. ****

Organiser’s name — printed, not merged. KCUR names him Ken McClaine; KSHB names him Kendon McClaine.¹³ The fuller form is used above. No source read this pass gives his role or organisation beyond “organiser” and “co-organiser,” and KSHB’s attribution of the week to Visit KCK sits alongside rather than against that.²³

The $9.13 price point is the week’s signature device: the 913 area code covers Kansas City, Kansas and Johnson County, and 913 Day is observed on 13 September, the final day of the week.¹

Participants

The eleven restaurants named in KCUR’s opening-day roster, with the addresses as published:¹

Business	Address	Type	Registry
Mrs. R’s Cafe	720 Quindaro Blvd.	Soul food	ms-rs-cafe
1930 Classic Kitchen	1930 N 77th St.	Classic American	1930-classic-kitchen
Wilson’s Pizza & Grill	1807 Quindaro Blvd.	Pizza and grill	wilsons-pizza-and-grill
Holy Smoke BBQ	8050 Leavenworth Rd.	Barbecue	holy-smoke-bbq-kck
The Neighborhood Eats	2100 N. 13th St.	—	the-neighborhood-eats
Nana’s Kitchen	7355 Leavenworth Rd.	Soul food	nanas-kitchen
Q13 Sports Bar & Grill	2724 N 13th St.	Sports bar and grill	q13-sports-bar-and-grill
Turkey Leggman	1916 Quindaro Blvd.	Turkey / comfort food	turkey-legg-man
Jones Bar-B-Q	6706 Kaw Dr.	Barbecue	jones-bar-b-q
Fast Fred’s Market	1806 N 18th St.	Market	fast-freds-market
John’s Java & Jazz	2003 N 5th St.	Coffee, cocktails, live jazz	johns-java-and-jazz

Fast Fred’s Market has been trading in Wyandotte County for 63 years — the longest tenure on the roster and, on that figure, one of the oldest continuously operating Black-owned businesses in the county. Its family business consultant Anita Taylor describes a stock of homemade cakes and penny candy alongside the main menu, and framed the week bluntly: “Celebrate Black Restaurant Week because it is a first. We want to make sure we do that big… Get out to support us this week. We all need to support each other.”³

Three of the eleven cluster on Quindaro Boulevard and two more on North 13th Street — a concentration that says something about where Black-owned food business in Kansas City, Kansas actually sits, and which matches the historical geography recorded at Quindaro.

The storm context

Mid-August 2026 storms did devastating damage in northeast Kansas City, Kansas — the same corridor where several of the participating restaurants sit — leaving parts of the county without power, with FEMA assessments still underway as the week began.⁴² That is why the promotion carried a recovery frame as well as a cultural one. Ritz Dasgupta of Visit KCK put the timing at the centre of it: the week helps “these local businesses to reconnect with their customers and continue their recovery process.”²

Ms. R’s Cafe, then in its 41st year, took sign damage and a brief loss of power and kept trading. Its owner Eddie Scover, asked how much longer he intends to run it: “I’m pushing for 50, 60 years. I don’t know.”²

The clearest illustration is Q13 Sports Bar & Grill, whose owner Tamara McConnell kept the bar open through the outage as a neighborhood refuge: “We took water, we did those things. We let them know we are open if you need electricity, a place to come for the evening we’ll be here.”⁴ On the week itself, McConnell framed the stakes in terms of visibility for a part of the metro she said “is often times overlooked,” calling it “a very important moment for Kansas City’s restaurants, and Wyandotte County’s businesses to shine,” and noting that the participating restaurants “offer a service to this community” centred on “bringing people together.”⁴

Significance

For the Registry and the Wiki alike, the week functions as a published, dated, first-party-adjacent census of Black-owned restaurants in Wyandotte County — a list of that kind, with addresses, from a named organiser and a public endorsement, is rare and is more reliable than a directory scrape. When this page was started, six of the eleven had no Registry page at all — a direct measure of how much thinner the vault’s Kansas-side coverage is than its Missouri-side. All eleven now have one, six of them built in the same session as this page.

It also lands in a specific civic moment: a county recovering from a storm, an inaugural event rather than an established one, and a deliberate use of the 913 identity as a marketing device.

Timeline

Date	Event
~late August 2026	Severe storms knock out power across parts of Kansas City, Kansas; FEMA assessment follows.⁴
5–6 September 2026	KCTV5 previews the week through Q13 Sports Bar & Grill’s storm-blackout response.⁴
7 September 2026	Black Restaurant Week opens; KCUR publishes the eleven-restaurant roster.¹
13 September 2026	Week closes on 913 Day, the source of the $9.13 price point.¹

Sources

Brandon Azim, “Kansas City, Kansas, kicks off its first Black Restaurant Week. These are the spots to try,” KCUR, 7 September 2026 — asserts: the week ran 7–13 September 2026 in Kansas City, Kansas; 11 Black-owned participating restaurants; organiser Ken McClaine; many meals at $9.13, referencing the 913 area code and 913 Day on 13 September; the stated purpose of supporting Black entrepreneurs and amplifying businesses affected by recent severe storms; endorsement by Christal Watson, mayor and CEO of the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas; and the full participant roster with addresses as reproduced in the table above, including that Mrs. R’s Cafe was founded in 1985 by Ruth Scover (d. 2021) and is now run by Eddie Scover, and is “one of the few places in Northeast Kansas City, Kansas, where one can get traditional soul food.” Syndicated the same day by KMUW and Kansas Public Radio. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷
“KCK’s first-ever Black Restaurant Week leads into 913 Day with 11 Black-owned restaurants,” KSHB 41 — asserts: the week ran 7-13 September 2026, concluding on 913 Day; Visit KCK, “a local nonprofit tourism organization,” is the organiser; participating establishments offered $9.13 specials; Mayor/CEO Christal Watson issued a proclamation recognising the restaurants’ contributions to the county’s cultural identity and economic vitality; the full eleven-restaurant roster; that several participants sit in KCK’s northeast area, which experienced devastating storm damage in mid-August 2026; Ritz Dasgupta of Visit KCK on the celebration helping “these local businesses to reconnect with their customers and continue their recovery process”; and that Ms. R’s Cafe, “operating for nearly 41 years,” sustained sign damage and brief power loss but continued operating, with owner Eddie Scover quoted: “I’m pushing for 50, 60 years. I don’t know.” ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
“‘We want to do that big’: KCK celebrates first Black Restaurant Week ahead of 913 Day,” KSHB 41 — asserts: the week ran 7-13 September into 913 Day; Kendon McClaine as co-organiser, with his quote “More or less a why not. Over the last few years, there’s been an emergence of Black entrepreneurship in the KCK/Wyandotte County area”; Anita Taylor, family business consultant for Fast Fred’s Market, with her quotes “Celebrate Black Restaurant Week because it is a first. We want to make sure we do that big” and “Get out to support us this week. We all need to support each other”; that Fast Fred’s Market has operated in Wyandotte County for 63 years and offers homemade cakes and penny candy alongside its menu, with select items at $9.13 that week; and the eleven-restaurant roster. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
“KCK bar that helped neighbors during storm blackout gears up for first Black Restaurant Week,” KCTV5 — asserts: a violent storm left Kansas City, Kansas without power roughly two weeks before publication; FEMA assessments were still underway; Q13 Sports Bar & Grill, owned by Tamara McConnell, opened its doors to neighbors during the outage, with her quote “We took water, we did those things. We let them know we are open if you need electricity, a place to come for the evening we’ll be here”; her characterisation of the neighborhood as “often times overlooked” and of the week as “a very important moment for Kansas City’s restaurants, and Wyandotte County’s businesses to shine”; and that participating restaurants “offer a service to this community” focused on “bringing people together.” Date conflict printed, not merged: the article URL carries 2026/09/06 while the fetched page reports a publication date of 5 September 2026. Both are recorded; the timeline above uses the range. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵