Talking birds and a curse: The Johnson County restaurant that nearly made it, but didn’t

Uniquely KC is a Star series exploring what makes Kansas City special. Are you feeling nostalgic for a Kansas City area restaurant that closed years ago? Share your memories, and we may write about the place in a future story.

Tucked among leafy tree branches, caged macaws and cockatoos watched from above as children plunged their greasy hands into piles of fries.

Janet Day, then Janet Hermes, balanced plates of ribs and pecan pie. Her chestnut hair was swept back in a ponytail, a coral shawl wrapped around her shoulders.

Her fellow waitresses wore matching skirts and wove through tables and tree trunks, where families order sirloin steaks for $2.55.

Then, like clockwork, the birds opened their animatronic beaks and spoke. (What did they say again? Day couldn’t remember.) Whatever it was, every child in the restaurant turned in their seats, eyes lit, to listen.

“It was a happy atmosphere,” she said. “We had lots of high chairs — I remember that.”

It’s been 50 years since Day has heard the squawking of machine fowls at the Betty Crocker Tree House Restaurant and Bake Shop in Overland Park — years before the first Rainforest Cafe put restaurant tables among the trees. Then suddenly, it was gone.

General Mills, a century-old giant in the food industry, opened four Betty Crocker Tree House Restaurants across the country in 1971 on a trial basis. The operations in Overland Park; Dallas; Scottsdale, Arizona; and Columbus, Ohio, closed practically overnight in 1974, said Brad Moore, executive director of the Overland Park Historical Society.

Sorely missed, fondly remembered and in many aspects, a mystery.

While the other three Tree House restaurants have since been demolished, only the Overland Park building remains, at 10600 Metcalf Ave. It housed a revolving door of restaurants: Overland Station, W.D. Frogg’s, Michael’s Plum, Italian Gardens. None ever rose to the level of wonder and excitement of Tree House.

Each inexplicably lasted for no more than two years. After the fifth failed restaurant, operators figured the building had bad mojo.

“I think it was rumored to be a cursed building if you wanted to have a restaurant,” Moore said. “So it stopped being a restaurant.”

The building became a men’s store called Kuppenheimer Clothiers for 12 years, later AAA Travel Center, and today, Midwest Tinting.

But to many longtime Johnson County residents, it’s still known as the old Tree House.

In addition to his duties with the historical society, Moore runs a Facebook page with tens of thousands of other nostalgic Overland Park natives called, “We grew up in The OP!”

There, they reminisce about their high school days, long-gone shopping malls and businesses that didn’t make their way into the 21st century. One restaurant comes up in conversation more than most: The group has no shortage of memories about the restaurant with talking birds.

It certainly didn’t close for lack of interest, Moore said.

“The kids loved it,” he said. “It would not be uncommon to have it be a packed house and have it be a wait.”

Moore went to the Tree House himself as a kindergartner, marveling at the robotic birds (“I wish I could remember what they said. Nobody else seems to recall”), the pyramid skylights and buttresses that made the building look like it was standing on stilts. Trees shot up around the dining area, branches reaching up to the vaulted ceiling.

The triangular “stilts” are still standing today, though the building’s distinct wood-paneling has been replaced with gray paint and yellowy vinyl.

Instead of its tall signs shaped like triplet leaves, a navy sign for Midwest Tinting sits out front. A garage bay door opens in the back.

Tree House could seat 266, according to General Mills, and contained a gift shop and bakery.

Tree House’s offerings included hamburgers ($1.35), seafood platters ($2.75) and gelatin salad molded in the shape of animals, but its cakes were some of its most popular items. Moore showed a photo of him and his sister posing with her Betty Crocker birthday cake. A doll stands on a platter, the skirt of her cake-and-candle dress ballooning out.

Moore stands off to the side, unsmiling.

“I actually remember being a little jealous of that cake,” he said. “I thought to myself, ‘Do they make one with a GI Joe?’”

Eighty-three-year-old Peggy Lee remembers taking her daughters, Christy and Jill, to the restaurant in their Sunday best after church services, chatting while they ate.

Her special needs daughter, Jill, was especially captivated by the talking birds. (Though Lee can’t remember what they said, either.)

“It was kind of a novel idea,” Lee said. “We were all very disappointed when it closed.”

At the time, there were fewer restaurants on the Kansas side of the metro, thanks to strict alcohol laws that lingered post-Prohibition.

“If you wanted to have a nice night out with a drink, you had to go to Missouri,” Lee said.

That made Tree House even more of an anomaly.

Ahead of Tree House’s opening in 1970, The Star teased the restaurant’s wholesome, family atmosphere, reporting that Overland Park was chosen as one of the four cities to test the concept because of its “Kansas City-can-do attitude.”

“The project was created on the premise that there is a real need for family oriented restaurants,” The Star said. “The growing trees, natural sun light, high raftered ceiling and color scheme are combined to create an inviting mellowness.”

Surely, if it were up to customers, the family-friendly restaurant would have stayed. But the decision was General Mills’, which ultimately wanted to invest resources in Red Lobster instead, according to a company statement.

(General Mills’ restaurant division, Darden Restaurants, sold Red Lobster to Golden Gate Capital in 2014 for $2.1 billion.)

Even with all the bells and whistles modern technology has made widely available, there’s nothing quite like Tree House in the Kansas City area today.

Rainforest Cafe opened its first restaurant in Minnesota in 1994 and brought the concept to Overland Park’s Oak Park Mall in 1999, but it closed a decade later.

T-Rex Cafe — Rainforest Cafe’s Prehistoric spinoff — was open in The Legends Kansas City from 2006 to 2017.

And while nobody in Overland Park can, for the life of them, remember what the birds said, perhaps it’s not a memory lost in time after all.

In a response to The Star, General Mills sent over fact sheets about the restaurant. According to their archivist, the birds turned their heads and flapped their wings as they chirped phrases like, “Rah, rah Audubon” (after wildlife artist John James Audubon, famous for his work “The Birds of America”). They sang a couple lines of “Let Me Call You Tweetheart.”

Learning this, Moore let out a long laugh.

“Well, that’s pretty amazing.”

(Editor’s note: After The Star interviewed former waitress Janet Day, she died at the age of 65.)