Nine new Mokas Coffee & Eatery locations are headed to the Kansas City region after the Salina, Kansas-based café chain signed a franchise development agreement with Cornerstone Hospitality, a group led by entrepreneurs Brice Turner and Jeff Bennett. The deal calls for six units across Clay and Jackson Counties on the Missouri side of the metro, with three more earmarked for Derby, Garden City, and Manhattan, Kansas. Active site selection is underway, and Cornerstone is targeting 2027 openings as the full nine-unit buildout progresses.
Each new location will replicate the Mokas prototype: a made-to-order breakfast and lunch kitchen anchored by in-house roasted coffee, a drive-thru lane, and an interior café setting. The kitchen line turns out wraps, sandwiches, soups, salads, freshly baked pastries, smoothies, and energy drinks — all prepared fresh on-site. For equipment dealers and kitchen designers working the Kansas City corridor, the pipeline represents nine full back-of-house outfits, from espresso and batch-brew stations to prep tables, refrigerated make lines, and ventilated cooking suites. Operators specifying small-footprint café kitchen packages will find Mokas-style dual-channel formats — drive-thru plus dine-in — an increasingly common brief in fast-casual buildout work.
The Franchisee Profile
Turner brings nearly 20 years of entrepreneurial experience to the deal, including a diverse portfolio spanning composites manufacturing, commercial real estate, and automotive services under his Duty First Holdings umbrella. Bennett complements him with a background in construction and land development, and prior experience launching and running a multi-unit franchise on the East Coast — credentials that will prove useful in coordinating simultaneous site buildouts across two states.
Jason Ingermanson, CEO of JRI Hospitality and President of Mokas Coffee & Eatery, framed the selection in terms consistent with how franchise systems evaluate operator expansion and kitchen commissioning: "Brice and Jeff's backgrounds and combined entrepreneurial experiences make them exactly the kind of franchise partner we look for. They understand what it takes to build something meaningful in a community, and that's exactly the spirit Mokas was built on."
Growth Context
Mokas is part of JRI Hospitality, a 145-plus-unit restaurant and hospitality group operating across 18 states. JRI is the largest franchisee of Freddy's Frozen Custard & Steakburgers, with more than 130 locations, and its growing portfolio also includes Chompie's Restaurants & Deli. Mokas itself launched 20 years ago in Salina and currently operates five corporate-owned locations — in Salina, Colby, and three in Wichita — with 15 more already under development in Wichita, Kansas City, and other Kansas markets before today's Cornerstone agreement is factored in.
The scale of JRI's development pipeline underscores a broader trend in the fast-casual café segment: brands that control their own roasting supply chain, as Mokas does through its dedicated Mokas Roastery, are leveraging that vertical integration as a quality-consistency selling point when recruiting franchisees. For equipment consultants and dealers, that roastery anchor also means each new unit arrives with a defined beverage-equipment specification — espresso platforms, cold-brew systems, and batch brewers — layered on top of a full hot-food kitchen suite. The combination makes these buildouts more complex than a typical coffee kiosk, and closer in scope to a full quick-service restaurant outfitting project.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
