Growing up, I spent many days after school getting lost in Borders. Before the bookstore opened its Riverhead, New York, location in 2003, I used our family outings to Sam’s Club to pick up a bargain book or two, but it was never enough. What the hell was a 12-year-old girl supposed to do with a $5.99 James Patterson hardcover? My grandfather could tell I was starved for a literary escape, so he offered to take me to Borders after school. When I walked into the store for the first time, I nearly cried. Books as far as the eye could see. I didn’t think it could get any better—and then I saw it: the café. And in the café, a number of my bookish classmates, reading and chatting. This was the place to be.
Ever since my Borders days, I've been a fan of the bookstore-and-café combo. And in recent years I've been thrilled to come across a growing number of independent bookstore cafés popping up all over America. In North Miami, Paradis Books & Bread offers a carefully curated selection of new and used books on critical race theory as well as natural wine and pizza in their wine bar and café. Two Dollar Radio, an independent publishing company in Columbus, Ohio, serves up vegan cuisine at their counter-service café alongside its newest book releases. In the Bronx, The Lit. Bar invites readers to partake in a little social sipping and introverted reading at the wine bar. Unlike Borders, which offered Seattle’s Best Coffee and mass-produced baked goods, today’s independent bookstores are rewriting what it means to be a bookstore café, drawing people in with the promise of unique menu items and connections with old and new friends.
Lucy Yu, a chemical engineer by training and the owner of Yu and Me Books in Manhattan, has always had a passion for literature. Growing up in Los Angeles, she would walk to Barnes & Noble at the Westside Pavilion and sit there for hours, reading and drinking coffee. This core memory inspired her to open her bookstore bar and café in Chinatown that focuses on immigrant stories and marginalized authors, as well as coffee and (pending liquor license) beer and wine. Yu believes that something really wonderful happens when two people share a drink together: “I always say that you can’t speak when you’re sipping, so it causes you to listen.”
Yu hopes to create a space where representation matters not only in the books she sells but in the café portion as well. When Yu and Me Books opened last December, pastry chef Lauren Tran, owner of the wildly popular Bánh by Lauren, supplied trays full of sweets. That Witch Ales You, an Asian American–owned nano brewery, donated growlers of their beers. Since then Yu has mapped out a long-term vision for her bar and café. “Having a café and having a bookstore are essentially two different businesses,” she says. “And then having pastries at the café is like another business on its own.” Liz Yee, owner of Kam Hing Bakery, the Chinatown institution, is known for her airy yet moist sponge cakes, and Yu plans to work with her and sell those cakes in the café. As for the bar, she wants to focus on predominantly female-owned wines and local brews, such as Dyke Beer Brewery. “They have some really wonderful beers and so much wonderful representation within the LGBTQ community.”
Ariell R. Johnson, owner of Amalgam Comics & Coffeehouse in Philadelphia, had been dreaming of opening her own bookstore since 2003. When Johnson was a student at Temple University, she had a routine: Every Friday she would pick up her comics from Fat Jack’s Comicrypt, a comic book store on Sansom Street, and then cross the road to Crimson Moon Coffee and Tea House and sit and read every book that she had purchased. Johnson recalls being enamored with owner Koko Darling’s name: “It’s like a superhero’s name.” (It takes one to know one: Johnson was once featured on the cover of Invincible Iron Man.) When the coffee shop closed its doors in 2005, Johnson was devastated. “So I just started to think: What if there was a comic book store that was also a place where you could hang out?”
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Amalgam opened in 2015 and has been a Kensington mainstay ever since. “Now that we’re here, we are very intentional about being a positive force for our community.” Amalgam provides a space where comic book lovers can come together, meet and talk, and nerd out. “Especially those folks who’ve ever gone into a comic book store and, because of what they look like or how they identify, have felt uncomfortable because those spaces are still very much catering to a white cisgendered male,” Johnson, who is Black, says.
Before the pandemic Johnson was the primary baker in the bookstore’s café and she would make all of its chocolate chip cookies, brownies, and comic-book-themed drinks. Today she is taking a bigger role and focusing on defining Amalgam’s multiple businesses. “We’re an in-store bookstore. We’re an online shop. We’re a café. We’re an event space,” she explains. “We really have to be a little more like, ‘Okay, you're doing this; you’re responsible for this; you’re responsible for this,’ so that everything is getting done.” The café is up and running at Amalgam, and you can get a cappuccino and a ham and cheese croissant. But the bakery is closed right now. “When we do return to baking, there will be somebody else in that role.”
Why are more and more indie bookstores with cafés opening? Well, they’re nostalgic. Many people who spent a lot of time at big-box booksellers like Borders can recall that devastating day when the company announced it would be shutting its doors. That was the same store where we would queue up, dressed in our robes and glasses, to pick up Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince at midnight. “I went to those midnight releases,” Yu remembers. “How cool did you feel dressing up as a teenager?” In a pandemic these spaces help us connect with one another too. When COVID-19 was at its highest point, roughly 35 percent of people worked from home, and when we logged off our work laptops, we simply turned our attention to another screen. “We all have these little computers that we carry in our pockets,” Johnson says. “If we have any inkling of downtime, we’re staring at them.” Yu has seen all kinds of connections at her bookstore, from dates to friends’ reunions after years apart. As a bookseller, those are the interactions she is excited to see. “That's something that's really special and it brings so much warmth to my heart.”
As a small-business owner, Yu believes the bookstore-café model has a bright future. Cafés require a lot of supervision, but they are a draw and help boost book sales. They add a great energy to the overall space, especially during an event. Yu and Me Books recently hosted Nicole Ponseca, coauthor of I Am a Filipino, for a signing. Ponseca brought in food that she cooked at home, and the event, Yu says, was like sharing food with family over a buffet table. “That’s something that’s really important to me because how can we pay homage to our culture without paying homage to our food?”
But Yu and Me Books and Amalgam are more than event spaces. They’re sanctuaries. In 2017 Amalgam received the Knight Foundation grant, which funds arts and culture organizations. This allowed Johnson to outfit the rear rooms with a dedicated classroom space for movie screenings, craft sessions, and after-school tutoring. This space has also allowed them to host their local Community Development Council (CDC) and the office of Parks and Rec for community meetings. This March, Yu and Me Books welcomed Soar Over Hate, a nonprofit supporting Asian Americans in the face of escalating anti-Asian violence, for a giveaway of pepper spray and personal alarms.
People love their local bookstores because their local bookstores love them back. Yu and Me Books and Amalgam are proof of that. Not only are they places where two friends can meet up after school or work and grab a cup of coffee, but they’re also spaces where the entire community can gather. Yu and Johnson are working hard to build that world. When people come in, they eat, drink, and read. They talk. And they create lasting connections.