Wi15: Successfully Managing a Café in Your Bookstore

Noting that "we've got three different models here of how we've introduced food and beverages into the bookstore," Donna Paz Kaufman of Paz & Associates and Story & Song bookstore bistro in Amelia Island, Fla., introduced her fellow panelists at the Wi15 education session "Successfully Managing a Café in Your Bookstore": Nicole Magistro of the Bookworm of Edwards in Edwards, Colo.; Carrie Morris of Booka Bookshop in Oswestry, Shropshire, U.K.; and restaurant industry consultant Henry Pertman of Total Image Creative.

Carrie Morris, Henry Pertman, Donna Paz Kaufman, Nicole Magistro

The Bookworm's café opened in 2007 and features 35 seats inside and 25 on the patio, which can be used about seven months of the year. Crepes, salads, soups and smoothies, as well as coffee and tea, are served, and the café accounts for 25%-28%, depending on the month, of overall business. Magistro recalled that the Bookworm had been a bookstore for a decade before launching the café because "we wanted to be an indispensable community gathering place, we wanted a place to gather that was not a bar."

Booka Bookshop is located in a small market town and has been operating for 10 years in a 2,000-square-foot space, including a café that can serve up to 25 people and accounts for 15% of total business. "When we opened, it was always with a view to having a café," Morris said. "It's a very simple, pared back operation. We serve cake and coffee, and even though it's a simple operation, it does contribute around 16% of our turnover.... There is the potential to do more, but there are also implications that come with that."

The bistro at Story & Song serves breakfast and lunch in an open-air courtyard "so we don't pay rent. It's just part of the property," Kaufman noted, adding that her business has three primary segments: "Over 50% of our business is retail, then add another 22%-26% from the bistro's everyday business, and the upstairs art gallery has become a venue and so now we have a catering business... And the margins are good; I'm happy with that, too."

Kaufman also observed that one thing she has seen from their consulting work is "you absolutely must acknowledge you are running two different businesses that reach two different industries. So as we have benchmarks in the book industry through ABACUS, there are different benchmarks in the food and beverage industry. Those figures, on QuickBooks or whatever you use for accounting, must be separated."

In studying bookstores with cafes, Magistro said she has found that most were not providing an experience through their website to make the whole brand visible. "And similarly, they weren't meeting the customer where they are, in places like online dining guides and review sites. That's a lot more important on the restaurant side of the business. You've got to have the Yelp and TripAdvisor listings. Perhaps you need to be on OpenTable taking reservations. Your menu page should be updated and fresh and highly visible. These things are critical on the restaurant side."

Conceding he didn't know the book industry well enough yet to make a specific recommendations, Pertman advised that the hospitality field is growing fast and bookstores "are not going to sell more books, so moving forward the part that has to grow is the hospitality segment.... You should really posture yourself in any way you can to get your share of that."

Magistro challenged the theory: "I don't know that that's true. We sat through a presentation this morning [Ryan Rafaelli's breakfast keynote] about the rise of independent bookselling and the benefits of being where we are in terms of community and curation and expertise. I'm not willing to give that up.... We don't want to devalue the book. We want to add value and that's the whole reason for us having the café, which helps people to linger, relax, lose themselves, browse awhile and buy books."

"It seems that what's consistent among the three of us who have cafés in the store is that we'd do it again," Kaufman concluded. "Yes, the learning curve is there. It takes some careful management and you've got to worry a lot, but it brings in people.... I think our bookstore wouldn't be as successful without the café and the café wouldn't be as successful without the bookstore." --Robert Gray

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