Ice cream fans in Manhattan will have to wait even longer for a scoop of Purple Pride. Kansas State University now says the beloved Call Hall Dairy Bar, closed since May 2025, will not reopen until spring, well after the building meant to house it formally opens this fall.
According to The Manhattan Mercury, a K-State representative confirmed the dairy bar will not reopen until spring, even though the Western Star Global Grain and Food Center — the new building set to house it — is scheduled for a ribbon-cutting ceremony on September 18.
The new location will provide a new home for the dairy bar.
A $127 Million Building With a Storied Name
The Western Star Global Grain and Food Center is one piece of a much larger undertaking. Per Kansas State University, the building represents a $127 million project within the university's broader $210 million Agriculture Innovation Initiative, a multi-year effort to modernize campus facilities for grain, food, and animal sciences. The facility carries the Western Star Global Grain and Food Center name.
Once it opens, the new dairy bar site will sit alongside an adjacent marketplace. The dairy bar offers products beyond the ice cream case that made it famous.
The Old Space Isn't Sitting Empty
While the retail counter is moving out of Call Hall, its vacated footprint is far from abandoned. The university is renovating the space into a modern, expanded dairy processing plant.
The processing plant is part of K-State's farm-to-spoon model. Under what the university calls its farm-to-spoon model, raw milk comes from a university herd located within two miles of campus.
Campus Dairy Tradition
The dairy bar is located in and adjacent to Call Hall.
Over the decades it became best known for churning out more than 40 ice cream flavors, including Purple Pride.
The operation includes an adjacent dairy processing plant. The combined dairy bar and processing plant employ one full-time staff member alongside up to 25 student workers. For now, K-State has not set an exact reopening date beyond the spring target, leaving Manhattan's ice cream faithful to wait a bit longer for their next cone.
