Meet Cute Romance Bookshop & Fizzery, a romance-focused bookstore with a cafe specializing in fountain soda beverages, will open in La Mesa, Calif., this spring, Forbes reported. Store founder Becca Title, whose background includes a career as a lawyer as well as a theater director and producer, is eyeing an April 2022 opening date.
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| Becca Title outside the future location of Meet Cute. | |
At opening the store will carry roughly 3,500 romance novels, with subgenres like "contemporary, historical, paranormal, fantasy, science fiction and YA romance" represented, among others. Title plans to emphasize books by authors of color, queer authors and authors who are disabled as well as stories featuring characters with those backgrounds. Her event plans include things like book signings, panel discussions and book club meetings.
The "fizzery" side of the store, which is a term Title invented, will sell "handcrafted sodas, egg creams and floats," complete with a popcorn machine and a selection of pre-made snacks from nearby small businesses. Title is also interested in adding "fizzy alcoholic beverages" at a later date.
Title told Forbes that she's "been daydreaming about owning a little bookstore for years," but only started to contemplate the idea seriously after the pandemic started. She noted that while it would be easier to open the store without the fizzery side of the business, "it was really important to me to create a space for people to gather, especially since I was doing my planning in the middle of our ongoing pandemic, which has caused a lot of people to feel very isolated."
She hopes her bookstore and fizzery serves as a community gathering space, and she reported that her community has had "really positive" reaction to her plans and to the in-person pop-ups she's hosted so far. She's also used these pop-up appearances as a way to gauge just what her customers will be interested in--there have been a lot of requests for queer romance novels especially.
She's found a location on a walkable street near "a lot of adorable small businesses" that is also easily accessible by trolley or car. When it came to learning the business of bookselling, Title said she "learned more or less everything I know so far about bookselling from other booksellers." The bookseller community, she added, is "extremely friendly, and folks are very generous with their time."