MLK Week at Vine Street: Dream Flights + Lunch & Learn
There are a lot of ways Kansas City “celebrates” Dr. King. Speeches. Breakfasts. A quote on a flyer and then back to business as usual.
At Vine Street Brewing Company, we don’t get that distance. We’re brewing on Vine Street, a few blocks from 18th & Vine, in a building that sat empty for almost forty years. We feel the gap between what this city says about equity and what actually shows up on the east side.
MLK Day here isn’t an inspirational poster. It’s a chance to ask what the dream looks like on the ground in a Black-owned brewery that’s trying to hold space for the neighborhood.
Dream Flight in the taproom
For MLK week, we built that question into the glass.
All week we’re pouring a Dream Flight – four beers that each carry a piece of Black Kansas City’s story:
East 71 (Cream Ale) – named for the highway that cut through Black Kansas City and pointed straight at the redlined east side. It’s a reminder that concrete and policy can shape a city as much as speeches do.
Black Is Beautiful (Fonio Ale) – brewed with West African fonio grain, connecting the taproom back to the continent and to the global Black brewing community that started the Black Is Beautiful project.
Jazzman (Black Lager) – our everyday nod to the music this district gave the world. Smooth, dark, and easy to drink, it’s meant to taste like a night on Vine when the horns are still talking.
Armstrong (American Lager) – named for Henry Armstrong, the first fighter to hold three world titles at once. It’s a North Star for Black excellence, stamina, and work rate.
None of this is charity and it’s not nostalgia. It’s a small, concrete way to say the dream belongs in real rooms with real people, not just in hashtags and parades. You can sit at the bar, grab the Dream Flight for $10, and taste a little of the story we’re trying to tell here.
From quotes to questions: MLK Lunch & Learn in the Groove Room
Quotes are easy. The hard part is what happens when you start talking about zoning, leases, and who actually gets to decide what lives – and what doesn’t – in a district like 18th & Vine.
On Thursday, January 22, we’re taking that seriously with an MLK Lunch & Learn in the Groove Room downstairs:
From Dream to District: MLK, 18th & Vine, and the Work Ahead in Kansas City
From 12:00–1:00 pm, we’ll sit down with Pat Jordan and use Dr. King’s words as a lens on what’s really happening in Kansas City right now – especially on the east side.
Pat is a community development executive who has spent decades turning neglected buildings into real community assets in Kansas City and beyond. She helped lead the design and $6 million renovation of the Gem Theater in the Historic 18th & Vine Jazz District and has guided projects like Morningstar’s Youth & Family Life Center, Senior Housing, and the Greenwood School redevelopment.
Together, we’ll talk about:
18th & Vine as operational ground, not a museum piece.
Who gets to make decisions about land, culture, and investment east of Troost.
What it might look like for MLK’s demands – jobs, housing, safety, dignity – to show up in budgets and contracts instead of just keynotes.
Your ticket includes lunch, non-alcoholic options, and space to ask real questions. It’s not a performance or a sermon. It’s a lunch hour with people who are doing the work, inside a room that exists because a group of Black Kansas Citians decided this block still matters.
Find details and tickets on our site under Events.
Why this matters here
Vine Street Brewing Company sits at 2010 Vine Street in an 1850s public-works building that was written off and practically invisible for decades. Choosing 2000 Vine was not about cheap rent or a cool backdrop. It was a decision to put a Black-owned brewery in the middle of a district that has carried Kansas City’s story for generations.
If Kansas City is ever going to get honest about who it is, Vine Street and 18th & Vine can’t just be photo ops. They have to be places where Black history, Black ownership, and Black futures are non‑negotiable.
MLK Day on Vine Street is one small way of saying that out loud.
The Dream Flight in the taproom, the Lunch & Learn in the Groove Room, the conversations that spill out onto the sidewalk afterward – all of it is our way of practicing the dream together instead of just remembering it.
The dream is not a slogan. It’s something we live together.
Come through, grab a seat, and help carry some of that hope with us – in the taproom on MLK Day and back here in the Groove Room on January 22.
