Cielo Coffee Roasters Takes Flight at Penrose in Kansas City

The Novel and Penrose building in Kansas City. All images courtesy of Cielo Coffee Roasters.

The clouds have parted and the runway is clear for a new boutique coffee roaster outside Kansas City, Missouri, called Cielo Coffee Roasters.

Led by Kyle Evans, who has held numerous roasting and production roles over the past 16 years, Cielo’s primary client to this point has been Penrose, the walk-up specialty coffee bar at one end of the East Crossroads Arts District restaurant Novel. 

Evans has served as the opening manager of Penrose since its debut last year, while separately launching Cielo out of a shared coffee production space with a Probat P-12 on the city’s outskirts. 

Evans first moved to Kansas City for a warehouse job for a well-known specialty coffee company in 2009, and in a couple of months was promoted to roaster’s apprentice then head roaster. 

“I started working much closer with the buying team, learning and absorbing everything I could about green coffee,” Evans recently told DCN. “[I was] tasting as much as I could and helping with sample intake and analysis.” 

Evans then had the opportunity to move to Honolulu, Hawaii, to assist in setting up and running the roasting operations for Honolulu Coffee. He was also charged with sourcing coffees from other Hawaiian producers, and delved deep into learning about the agricultural side of coffee production.

“I was also learning how to navigate the logistics, green forecasting and demand planning as well as maintain green coffee QC practices for the company,” said Evans. “It was also during this time in Hawaii that I earned my Q.”

In 2016, Evans moved to Northern California to work with Blue Bottle Coffee as a coffee logistics manager.

“As a logistics manager I was working closely with our green coffee buyer, supply chain leads, production and QC teams for menu planning for the e-commerce and retail teams,” said Evans. “Eventually, as Blue Bottle continued to grow I was working closely with our teams in Japan, Korea and China and eventually Vietnam to move coffee all around the world.”

Three years ago, Evans moved back to Kansas City before launching Cielo in February 2024. Penrose opened about five months later, and Cielo’s coffees can now also be found at Christopher Elbow Chocolate and the local flower shop Verdant.

As Cielo continues to grow organically, Evans is focused more on local, human connections than he is on e-commerce, despite his past experiences with the latter. 

“One place I thought I would really push was on e-comm, but the more I explore that idea the less I find pleasure,” Evans said. “I have come to realize that I personally don’t necessarily enjoy buying things online… Coffee, for me, is a very personal experience and without the human connection, it seems something is lost.”

Evans is also applying a personal touch to all the coffees he’s sourcing and roasting under the Cielo name. 

“I am sourcing the coffees I want to drink and I am roasting them the way I want to roast them,” said Evans. “This can mean many different things based on my mood or how I want to enjoy any given coffee or how I want to romanticize the experience of drinking coffee. But in general, the coffees I enjoy are highly traceable — that means working with importers that place an emphasis on the details that define quality, both intrinsic and extrinsic.”

Cielo’s online offerings currently include a mix of washed-process and honey-process single-origin coffees from origins such as Bolivia, Honduras, Rwanda and Sumatra. 

“Roasting is truly about finding the spot that allows any given coffee to shine,” said Evans, noting that coffees are also subjected to different brew methods to find ideal results. A Seattle-made Slayer espresso machine supports the coffee program at Penrose, where Evans said he has “absolutely fallen in love with coffee service.”

That newfound passion may help guide Cielo’s direction moving forward. 

“I think the next phase is still in the works and not fully realized. But I believe it will be a larger, more dedicated production space with space for service and training,” said Evans. “Maybe another espresso bar or finding the right partnerships to collaborate with. But regardless what happens next it also needs to happen in a way that is sustainable for the business.”

Penrose is located at 1927 McGee St. in Kansas City, Missouri.

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