An influx of holiday shoppers is just the start for Made in KC’s newly opened store inside Union Station, which is positioned to take advantage of coming FIFA World Cup traveler traffic.
It's opening years after the local-first retailer’s owners first envisioned making the quintessential Kansas City destination a home for one of their shops.
“We’ve been wanting to do this for a long time,” said Keith Bradley, co-owner of Made in KC. “It makes sense with how iconic Union Station has become that we should be here, representing local goods in Kansas City. It’s a great pairing, and we’re honored to be part of this amazing legacy.”
The shop sits inside the Jarvis Hunt Room at Union Station. With the tucked-away space previously used for occasional weddings and other small events, Bradley said, operators of the building created a more direct entry point for the room, which is positioned between the U.S. Post Office and Union Station’s Grand Hall.
“All of our products obviously come from Kansas City-based companies, with a focus on giftables, whether that’s candles, ornaments, puzzles, boxes of chocolates,” he said, acknowledging the store’s proximity to a number of other retail tenants vying for the attention of holiday shoppers and visitors. “You’ll find apparel that reflects Kansas City, but not items like official team jerseys.”
Opening the store inside Union Station couldn’t have come at a better time, Bradley added, noting the shop’s positioning better pulls together Made in KC’s network of neighborhood shops, marketplaces and cafe concepts.
“We’re excited that visitors flying in to Kansas City’s airport will be greeted with the best local goods inside the terminal at our Made in KC store, and now they’ll have access to these local goods when they come to yet another of Kansas City’s great destinations,” he said.
“That’s a win for all the artisans and makers,” Bradley continued. “And it really sets Kansas City up to be known beyond just our barbecue and sports teams — as a place that supports local businesses and makers better than any other community in the country.”
Made in KC’s arrival at Union Station came quickly after years of working toward the right moment. The retailer relocated an existing shop location to make it happen, Bradley said.
“We essentially just lifted up the entire midtown store and moved it into Union Station,” he said, noting the team behind the scenes shifted products, fixtures and infrastructure at a much quicker pace than if Made in KC was establishing a wholly new store.
Owners first began conversations with Union Station in 2019, hoping to find a fitting location for the rapidly expanding brand in the heart of Kansas City, Bradley said.
“The process got interrupted, no surprise, by the pandemic,” he explained. “We were able to forge our own path in the years since, and Union Station also continued to thrive. Now opportunity has aligned with timing and we were able to move into what’s really the only unleased space in the building.”
Relocating from Made in KC’s midtown location — opened in April 2021 as a shared concept with the Black Pantry — made sense, Bradley said. The Black Pantry had already moved to a larger space nearby earlier this year, and a related Made in KC Cafe at the site was wound down in 2023.
“It was a really tough corner, and we learned that the hard way,” said Bradley, noting changing shopping trends in the Tower East neighborhood amid redevelopment efforts, an economic downturn and a recent road diet that saw 31st Street dramatically restricted, cutting off healthy traffic. “Martini Corner proved it wasn’t going to be a good fit in the short term, or potentially the long term.”
They made the move Nov. 22 — less than a week before Thanksgiving.
“We weren’t building from scratch, but it was a really intense week — especially navigating the unique nature of Union Station,” Bradley said. “For example, the surfaces are made of marble, so we’re not able to hang signage and inventory in ways that we might in other locations.”
The 1,300-square-feet footprint — historically the original men’s smoking lounge for the train station — also offers no backroom for extra inventory, so the team had to create a hidden space within the store to accommodate those needs, he said.
Adjusting to the iconic building is a worthwhile tradeoff, Bradley said.
“Union Station gives customers at our new neighborhood shop an extra dynamic experience,” he continued, describing an intentional push by the retailer to lean into experience-infused Kansas City businesses like Stellar Goods and Gifts, through which shoppers can build their own ornaments inside the store at Union Station.
Made in KC customers might already be familiar with Farmboy Fragrance, Bradley said, which allows customers the experience to scoop and craft their own potpourri blends in-store.
“We’re creating space to give customers a more tactile, more hands-on experience than what you can find in other stores,” he said. “For us, it’s also about telling the stories of the artists and makers who we work with, and the real impact and realization that 90 cents on the dollar spent in our stores is going to stay within the Kansas City economy.”
This story was originally published by Startland News.
