Through the day, I’ll be discussing some of our thinking about how we intend to integrate a new coffee shop into our existing space vs. the possibility of utilizing nearby space.
When Destinations Booksellers acquired this building in 2004, it already had a tenant in place. We determined that rather than eject the tenant, we would play out that lease, take the income, and make the necessary compromises to open the store in the remaining 60% of the space. It was probably a wise decision.
Later, we elected to terminate the lease and our tenant moved away, freeing up un-remodeled space to expand the bookstore. We’ve never been completely happy with the broken up spaces, but growth in revenues has never justified renovations in that former office space.
At the beginning, and again when the new space became available, we heavily researched the viability of opening some sort of coffee/dining operation in the store. It’s certainly not essential that the a bookstore have a coffee shop, and some would argue it’s not even desirable.
Our reasoning then was that a coffee shop is a completely different kind of business. The margins are different, the staffing is different, and the skills set is different. There’s not necessarily an overlap between people who buy books and people who eat out or prefer premium coffees and teas. We reasoned that with our resources, opening a coffee shop would constitute doubling down on our investment in New Albany, and that just wasn’t something we were prepared to do, no matter how viable the idea of a good shop in downtown is.
Along with others, we’ve tried to recruit other businesses and entrepreneurs to bring us a coffee shop, either here at our place or elsewhere in the walkable urban core. Those efforts have failed to bear fruit.
I can’t really say what has changed now. I suppose it’s the “grow or die” phenomenon. We certainly haven’t outgrown the bookstore. Now, in our fifth year in New Albany, we think we know the market. We get new customers every day, but the economic panic has frozen the wallets of even the most avid book-lovers. The idea of outgrowing our 3,000 square feet because of New Albany’s demand for books is, frankly, ludicrous.
Accordingly, the way to achieve the necessary growth is to give you more reasons to visit the store. Presumably we’ll get our book buyers down to the store more often when they realize they can get a great coffee, soup, sandwich, or salad without necessarily buying a book. And if you don’t SEE the books, you’re certainly not going to buy them. So we should see a boost in bookstore sales by adding the coffee shop.
But what will make the coffee shop go, what will make it a viable business, is acceptance by the community of our high quality foods and beverages. We believe more and more people will rediscover New Albany’s urban core when they have choices. At first, that will mean dining choices, so we’re situating ourselves to offer something that, heretofore, was not available here. Our bill of fare, and our prices, won’t be duplicates of what we already have downtown. As more choices become available, we’re convinced that we will be an important part of the growth in awareness of the desirability of spending time downtown.
So, it’s a go. Over the past six weeks, our floor planning has changed almost daily. We considered the building next door. We considered putting the coffee shop in the front of our building, with the bookstore occupying the rest of the space.
Our building was built in 1955 and designed as office space. No accommodations were made for modifying the building for other uses. It’s on a concrete pad – no subfloor, basement, or crawlspace. Utility service enters at the rear, off of our parking lot.
Putting a fully plumbed kitchen, even the small one envisioned for our type of establishment, in the front of the building would require an extensive run of plumbing, probably running along the walls above the floor. We think that’s both unnecessary and unnecessarily expensive.
Our current plan is to install the coffee counter/kitchen at the rear of the store. We’ll have to cordon (and tarp) off the area during the construction phase, and we’ll have to reconfigure both our bookstore sales counter and our bookshelf layout. Floor drains will have to be cut, separate water lines for tap and filtered/softened water will be installed, and our natural gas lines and electric service will have to be upgraded significantly.
We don’t intend to have the kind of kitchen that requires a hood since we won’t be frying up hamburgers, etc. We’ll be offering salads, soups, and sandwiches, probably grilled paninis, both meat-based and vegetarian. While are ingredients are going to be high quality, we don’t really plan to be a fine dining establishment. Or should I say, we don’t intend to be a “fine dining” establishment like The Windsor or The Bank Street Brewhouse. We’ll use the best ingredients, including locally grown produce in season, but our niche will be the low-cost lunch and the light supper. If you’re really hungry, order two paninis, or take the soup and the panini. And of course, our lattes and cappuccinos will be mighty tasty and filling, too.
But back to the “infrastructure.” I’m envisioning a counter that runs 12 feet on a diagonal from the back entrance hallway, then turning 45 degrees to run 8 or nine more feet toward our north wall. Under one floor plan, that would give us something like 315 s.f. of kitchen space.
Within that space we’ll need a triple-sink for washing, a hand sink, a prep sink, and a mop sink. We’ll need to fit a stand-up cooler, an ice maker, storage shelves, and perhaps a freezer, though we might settle for a domestic refrigerator/freezer. We’ll have a milk cooler and perhaps a third, glass-front cooler to display some of the chilled/refrigerated items for sale (soda, yogurts, salad, etc).
One of the big questions we have right now is whether or not to incorporate our coffee roaster into the kitchen. Where we put that will be an irrevocable decision since we’ll have to cut a hole in the roof to vent the heat from the nearly 500 degree roasting process. There’s some appeal to installing the roaster in a public area, like they’ve done at Hob Knobs up on the hill. Coincidentally, my current preference is to install here the very same roaster (Diedrich) that they use up there.
However, since we will be both a bookstore and a coffee shop, the idea of installing an elegant roaster out on the floor for customers to admire has to be weighed against the value of that same space as dining tables or bookshelves. We’re very likely to put that in the kitchen, where it will remain visible, but out of the flow of customer traffic.
That leaves one compelling question: Where to install seating?
The front windows, particularly the western window, seems to be an obvious choice. But do we also install seating back near the counter? Just how many people do we need to seat? 20? Fewer? Do we want bar-like seating, tall tables?
Posted by newalbanist 
Posted by newalbanist 