BookBar
Image courtesy of the store
The Tennyson Street arts district of Denver hosts a myriad of one-of-a-kind shops, eateries, studios, and galleries. The stores here sell everything from craft beer to handmade clothing, custom jewelry to outdoor gear. About halfway between César Chávez Park and The Oriental Theater music venue lives one particularly special red storefront from which the scent of roasting rosemary and truffle mixed nuts wafts alongside the sounds of the espresso machine or uncorking wine bottles, depending on which side of 5 p.m. you arrive. Enter and discover a brick interior with a bar to the right serving local, seasonal food and beverage delights, multiple shelfs of new releases to your left, and a particularly unique check-out counter directly in front composed of stacked, page-out books, where an employee stands, welcoming you.
The owner of this special wine bar/bookshop, Nicole Sullivan, has long been thinking of business ideas, but the one that came to fruition as BookBar started as a solution to a problem faced by her book club.
“It’s always been a challenge of where our meetings should take place, especially as we started getting a little older, getting married, having babies, and it became more complicated to plan and host in our homes,” she says. “Cafés typically don’t serve wine and close late afternoon. Restaurants weren’t ideal because we weren’t having a full meal. Bars are too loud and crowded. I thought a bookstore/wine bar would be a great place to meet.”
Image courtesy of the store
The opportunity to turn the concept into a reality came at the end of 2012, when Sullivan discovered her local bookstore was shutting down. At the time, she had been taking care of her children at home for seven years after attending culinary school; prior to that she worked as a report analyst in the corporate world. Sullivan approached the bookshop owners upon learning the news and asked if they had ever considered adding a wine bar.
“As soon as it came out of my mouth,” she says, “I knew I had to do it.”
Six months later, Sullivan began negotiating to purchase the building that housed the bookstore so that BookBar was able to own its space. “Making finances work for a bookstore is incredibly difficult, even more so it you are paying rent or leasing,” she says. “Real estate was much different than it is now, so there’s no doubt in my mind that we would’ve been priced out very quickly had we not purchased our property.” It also allowed BookBar room to grow, taking over the whole building and turning the backyard into a patio for outdoor events.
Image courtesy of the store
BookBar has continued to expand its business in ways beyond the physical property, as well. In 2020, it launched BookBar Press, stemming from a collaboration with Denver Center for Performing Arts in 2018 where the store hosted a four-week, micro theatre run in the evenings. “It was a whole different way to use the store, and it was so fun, hanging out with theatre folks, so I started thinking that we could take it one step further and publish the plays being performed,” says Sullivan. Last year, the press also published a collection of poems, and is releasing a middle grade novel this June.
Most recently, BookBar also made the decision to purchase The Bookies, a fifty-year-old children’s and education-centered bookstore in Denver. Sullivan had been familiar with the store and its loyal following as well as the role it has long played in the community, supporting education through the donation of reading and teaching materials to teachers and schools. She felt drawn in by the genuine, nurturing environment and wanted to help save it.
“You can sense a theme here,” she jokes, as a similar sentiment led her to purchase BookBar. “I need to realize at some point that I don’t need to act on every idea that I have.”
So far, though, the ideas have panned out well. Sullivan intends to keep many of the charming aspects of The Bookies while updating some of their business practices. One part of this includes The Bookies becoming a Public Benefit Corporation, meaning the store is driven by community service rather than profits.
BookBar also has a number of community initiatives folded into its business model, such as serving local products in the café/bar and donating 10% of sales to their non-profit BookGive, which donate books throughout the metro Denver area. “I’ve always been very civic minded,” says Sullivan, “and I think it’s so important to give back to the community that you live in and work in. It makes every business a little richer if you partner with organizations and get involved with what’s going on around you.”
The cultivation of community, of course, has been difficult during the pandemic. Sullivan and the BookBar team found themselves unable to offer their usual space for events and gatherings, and instead constantly retooling their store’s strategies. “Our business model almost seemed like an accordion, constricting and expanding,” Sullivan says. “It’s all been very reactive.”
At the start of the pandemic, BookBar had to shift overnight to being able to handle online sales directly from warehouses in order to get books into people’s hands, a difficult process that led to the decision to shift their point of sale system from Square to the bookstore-oriented Bookmanager. The store also struggled with COVID guidelines for retail versus restaurants given their hybrid nature.
Image courtesy of the store
“We’ve gone through various iterations,” Sullivan says, explaining how their indoor seating configurations and mask requirements have changed with COVID spikes, “but it’s not anything you could plan for.” The pandemic also altered their bar operations significantly where sales were down 80%. This was made up for on the book side of the business as people read more than ever, but Sullivan hopes the store can now start to return to their pre-pandemic 50-50 split.
For the rest of 2022, BookBar will work to integrate systems with The Bookies more smoothly, as well as continuing to expand the press and BookGive’s non-profit work, alongside restoring BookBar’s pre-pandemic business operations as best as possible with the help of a number of new team managers. That sounds like a lot, but Sullivan is hopeful.
“I’m just kind of putting things into place, thinking longer term, bigger picture, and setting in motion a management structure where I can possibly get a little rest and read a book,” she says. “Even though it feels like we keep starting over, I’m a hopeless optimist. If you want to make something work, you have to be optimistic about it. Believe in yourself, and believe in the people you have chosen to be on this path with you, then set them up for success.”
Recommendations from the Bookseller
The American Booksellers Association (ABA) recently changed their Ends Policies regarding the First Amendment, something that has been a hot topic in the independent bookselling community. “It was kind of a shocking move, so I’ve been trying to wrap my head around it,” says Sullivan, who picked up this book for context by the executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship. Through examining American history, Finan argues that free speech is actually the key to helping prevent violence rather than causing it.
A dark read in light of the current Russian invasion in Ukraine, this powerful investigation by a New York Times bestselling journalist unpacks the roles propaganda, secrecy, and myth played in one of the worst nuclear disasters in history. “I like to know not just the news of what’s happening right now, but what led to it,” Sullivan says. “It’s heavy subject matter, but the way he writes it, it pulls you right in.”
Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson
For those looking for a slightly lighter read, this novel was Sullivan’s favorite read during the worst days of the pandemic. “I’ve been recommending it to everybody,” she says. “It was such a fun read. I just loved the dialogue and his writing, and the whole storyline is just so creative and inventive.” Dive in to find the story of a woman who finds new meaning in her life when she takes on caring for two unusual children who literally get a little fired up when they grow angry.
Image courtesy of the store
