A new deli with a Biblical-based ownership group is once again planning to locate in downtown Lawrence

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Construction at 617 Vermont Street in downtown Lawrence is pictured in this October 2025 photo.

About 10 years ago, a unique group came to town with plans to open a deli in downtown Lawrence.

While the shop — dubbed The Yellow Deli — planned to serve steamed sandwiches and use an ancient grain called spelt for its hand-made bread, those weren’t the most unique elements of the business venture.

Instead, I would argue, it was the deli’s business plan that dates back more than 2,000 years and quotes the Disciples of Jesus. The deli would be owned and operated by a group of individuals who aim to have a lifestyle similar to the 1st century Christian church, where people often lived together as a group and shared resources.

The Yellow Deli, however, never did come to be in downtown Lawrence. The group bought the building at 617 Vermont St. — just north of Dempsey’s Burger Pub — but for most of the last 10 years, it has set empty. For a brief time period, the group operated a market out of the site, but never an actual sandwich shop.

Now, however, there are at least 800,000 reasons to believe that it will.

The city has issued a building permit for $800,000 worth of work to basically entirely rebuild the 617 Vermont St. building, and a representative of the group told me Tuesday that the building will serve as the home of The Yellow Deli.

By the time the project is all said and done, it likely will be over a $1 million venture because the current building permit only is to construct the shell of the building. A separate permit for all the interior work of the building is still needed, and deli representative Eli Morgan told me the interior improvements will be extensive.

Morgan said the building will have mezzanine seating areas and fireplaces for people to gather around while enjoying a meal, among other amenities.

“We are building this for the town of Lawrence,” Morgan said. “We want them to find a safe place to have a peaceful dinner and peaceful breakfast.”

There are about 20 U.S. cities and more than a dozen international cities that have The Yellow Deli sandwich shops. This will be the first in Kansas, though we have them on each side of us — one in Boulder, Colo. and another in Warsaw, Mo., according to the deli’s website.

All of the deli locations share an important mindset. The deli’s website calls ownership of the deli a “group effort” that supports their “community lifestyle,” which involves all the deli employees living and working together.

Morgan said that is indeed the case in Lawrence.

“We enjoy a lot of our lives together,” Morgan said.

I wrote about the group all the way back in 2014 when it first came to town and was announcing plans to open the deli on Vermont Street. At that time, the deli acknowledged being part of an organization known as The Twelve Tribes, which believes in communal living and the practices of the early Christian church. While The Yellow Deli’s website no longer mentions that affiliation, Morgan confirmed the group is still part of The Twelve Tribes.

Over the years, The Twelve Tribes has been the subject of multiple allegations related to the lifestyle of it members, including several from the Southern Poverty Law Center, which alleges racism and discrimination towards homosexuality, among other allegations.

On its website, The Yellow Deli acknowledges that the group behind the restaurant has been criticized for its practices, but said the deli locations are meant to be a form of outreach to showcase the group’s values.

“Sadly, fear of evil or perverse behavior going on among us has caused some to circulate unfounded rumors about us, thinking we must have bad motives,” The Yellow Deli website reads. “We hope that through having an open and hospitable place like our Yellow Deli, people will be able to see that we are not really strange and scary, but just friendly folks who love God and our neighbors.”

Morgan told me that statement sums up how the group feels about the various allegations that are easily found on the internet.

“As far as us and what we’re doing, we do what we do because we found it in God’s word, and we believe it,” he said.

There’s also something else Morgan said he thinks Lawrence residents should know about the venture.

“We’ll have the best hot sandwiches in town,” he said.

Area residents, though, will have to wait awhile before they can try them. The construction work on the project is extensive. About three-quarters of the building has been demolished — its roof, its facade and all of its interior. Lawrence-based Paul Werner Architects is designing the remodeled version, and it will include a new facade that is more historically accurate for the downtown area, architect Leticia Cole told me.

But Cole also said work on the site is expected to take a year to complete, and Morgan said the group expects it will be slightly more than a year before it opens the deli.

The group, however, is nothing if not patient. It never abandoned the idea of a deli, but did have to put it on the back-burner for many years, Morgan said.

“We just had other priorities we had to take care of, and we finally got through all of those,” Morgan said.

Land records show the 617 Vermont St. property is owned by Yellow Deli In Lawrence, LLC, which in turn is largely owned by a group called Community in Lawrence, LLC, according to state corporation records. That corporation is the owner of another significant property in Lawrence — the 805 Ohio St. house in Old West Lawrence. That large, million dollar residential property, which served as the city’s first hospital in the early 1900s, has been owned by the group since at least 2016, according to land records.