Flashback Friday: Ice cream parlor was a Towne East attraction when the mall first opened
Welcome to Flashback Friday, a weekly feature that will appear every Friday on Kansas.com and Dining with Denise. It’s designed to take diners back in time to revisit restaurants they once loved but now live only in their memories — and in The Eagle’s archives. This week’s featured restaurant, Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlour, opened in Towne East Square in 1975.
In August of 1975, Towne East Square was brand new. Celebrity Ed McMahon came to town to cut the ribbon for the grand opening of the mall, a $50 million, 1.1 million square-foot shopping behemoth Wichita had been waiting on for years. Among the first retail tenants were anchors JCPenney, Dillard’s and Henry’s and stores like Waldenbooks, Kinney Shoes, County Seat, Spencer Gifts and Gordon’s Jewelers.
Farrell's opening July 1975 17 Jul 1975, Thu The Wichita Eagle (Wichita, Kansas) Newspapers.com
But Towne East also opened with several businesses offering food and treats. One of them was Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlour, a vibrant restaurant that many Wichitans still remember today.
Farrell’s, which sat just inside the main entrance on the east-facing side of the mall, was a colorful, noisy place where staff members paid tribute to ice cream parlors of the 1890s by wearing pinstripe shirts and straw hats. If customers ordered one of the store’s crazy concoctions — like the Farrell’s Zoo, which was so big it required 8.5 pounds of ice cream and two employees to carry it to a table — the staff would sound sirens. Other orders elicited drum rolls or clanging bells. The staff members, many of them local high schoolers, had enthusiasm to spare.
The decor matched the throwback theme. In a 1975 story, The Wichita Eagle described it as “turn-of-the-century with authentic Tiffany lamps, silver dishes, bentwood chairs, Gibson girls, a player piano and singing waiters and waitresses.”
Farrell's ad 1975 15 Jul 1975, Tue The Wichita Beacon (Wichita, Kansas) Newspapers.com
The ice cream shop was part of a chain that was founded by Bob Farrell in Oregon in 1963, and the concept eventually spread across the country.Wichita’s Farrell’s was the 105th in the chain, which in 1972 had been purchased by the Marriott Corp. All Farrell’s stores featured a big candy counter full of old-fashioned treats. The shops were known for stocking giant jawbreakers, and Farrell’s was the largest retailer of lollipops in the country.
Though it also served a menu of “vest popping” entrees including burgers, fish and chips, chef’s salads and a variety of sandwiches, Farrell’s was known for its soda fountain and the many ice cream sundaes it produced. The Trough, which was “fit for a pig,” was big enough for two. The Gibson Girl included vanilla ice cream, grenadine, banana nectar, whipped cream, “exotic sherbets” and toasted almonds.
Farrell’s was one of the stars of a list of restaurants and food vendors that opened when the mall did. Among the others on the upper level were Wyatt’s Cafeteria, Orange Bowl (serving cheese pizza by the slice and orange freezes), Orange Julius, Karmelkorn Shoppe and and Mr. Dunderbak’s — another restaurant that still lives in Wichitans’ memories. On the lower level was another ice cream shop called Bresler’s 33 Flavors
The Farrell’s shop had seating for 150, and in its early days, it stayed open until 1 a.m. on the weekends. The Eagle later reported that, during its first two weeks in business, Wichita’s sales topped all other Farrell’s stores nationwide.
But it doesn’t appear that the ice cream shop lasted very long. The final mention of it in the Eagle’s archives was a help-wanted ad that appeared in September of 1979.
According to reports, nationwide sales started to drop right around that time, and most of the Farrell’s across the country were sold off in the 1980s. Marriott sold the chain in 1982, and very few Farrell’s existed by 1990. The final location, in Brea, California, closed in 2019.
