The secret to Robin Krause’s success is her ability take a good thing, make it better and then multiply it. As the owner of Billie’s Grocery, now with two locations, one in midtown Kansas City, and her newest in Leawood, Kansas, Krause has shown she has a knack for repeating herself in a fresh and delicious way.
Growing up in a restaurant family in Peculiar, Missouri, Krause worked at her parents at their own greasy spoon, Bill & Deb’s Café. It was a popular spot in town serving diner food favorites, and it was her Dad, Billie, as his family and friends called him, who was the chef and foodie in the family.
“He was always cooking. At the restaurant, he would make eggs and bacon at breakfast or fried chicken at dinner, a recipe we still use at my restaurant today, and when he came home you could find him putting a pot of lobsters on to boil in the backyard,” says Krause. “He was the one that gave me my passion for food and hospitality.”
She even approached her Dad at one point about them opening a restaurant together in Kansas City, but she could never convince the country boy that city life could be for him. When he died unexpectedly in 2015, it hit Krause hard. “He didn’t drink or smoke, but he had a terrible diet, so when he died of a sudden heart attack, it was a shock, and made me look at my own health in a new way,” she explains.
At the time of her father’s death, Krause was busy running four Filling Station Coffee locations and Soho Bakery, a business she built from the ground up, and one that was taking its toll on her own physical health at the time. That’s when she made the decision to sell her entire portfolio to the folks at Messenger Coffee, keeping a financial stake for a time, and left the restaurant industry to focus on her own physical healing, and her desire to help others heal.
“At that point, I wanted to focus on building my wellness practice, so I went back to school to get my degree from the Institute of Integrative Nutrition where I became a nutritional therapist and health coach, explains Krause. “In order to support my family while I was in school, I needed to either make a job or find a job, so I decided to open Unbakery and Juicery, recently renamed, Billie’s Juicery, in East Brookside and the rest has flowed from there.”
For her second Billie’s Grocery at Ranchmart North, Krause delivers an all-white, sleek space that is more than double in size from her midtown spot and includes a breezy wrap-around outdoor patio, coffee and cocktail bar. The pastry case has also doubled in size, overflowing with sweet treats that include gluten-free and dairy free cakes, bars, cookies, bread and more made by her pastry team at her new commissary bakery on Kansas City’s Westside just for Billie’s Grocery.
The menus are identical at both locations offering a breakfast/brunch menu and an all-day menu, which both focus on serving healthy, whole food dishes that cater to both meat-lovers as well as those who prefer a plant-based diet. Krause says some of her most popular dishes are the gluten-free sesame fried chicken salad and the lazy sushi bowl made with marinated sashimi grade raw tuna, rice and vegetables, but still others prefer her grass-fed beef burger or Reuben sandwich.
New to the Leawood location is something Krause has nicknamed the “bougie salad bar,” but it is something she took from her favorite gourmet grocery store in Los Angeles, Erewhon. For those that don’t want to wait in line to order from her regular menu, she has a separate counter that offers a rotating selection of different fresh salads that guests can and either order by the pint to-go or they can get a box and choose to mix and match several salads for one price.
There is a much expanded grab-and-go grocery area stocked with her own line of soups, sauces, and dressings along with meals and sides to re-heat and enjoy at home, and a new in-house floral department selling fresh arrangements, along with a much expanded selection of gifts, cookbooks, healthy home and kitchen goods.
Billie’s Grocery is meant to give people plenty of options to eat and drink, options that weren’t necessarily available to her Dad, but might have helped prolong his life. Her restaurant is a love letter to him, and everyone else looking for more food options to make their own culinary choices a little easier to feed.
Billie’s Grocery in Leawood is open Monday through Saturday from 8 am to 8 pm, and Sunday 8 am to 3 pm.
Billie’s Grocery Leawood, 3614 West 95th Street, Leawood, Kansas, 66206, 913-415-2222, billiesgrocery.com