The Room Within a Room

Stef has three second-location options in motion: one nonprofit-dependent (long-term), one with owners on vacation (on hold), and one in a shopping center (actively pursuing). The shopping center spot is 500 square feet—small, but workable because of a design concept she discovered visiting River Bend Books in West Hartford, Connecticut.

At River Bend, she noticed their genius: a room within a room. They created an intimate event space inside their small bookstore. Stef is applying this to her floor plan using double-sided bookshelves as walls—doubling capacity, creating specialty zones (history, nonfiction) around the perimeter, and leaving the inner room for fiction and high-demand titles with moveable tables for events.

The foot traffic at this shopping center location is solid, which matters more than she realized. Walk-by customers create a baseline of curious shoppers. The numbers work, but it's a 2-year lease—more risk than her Larkspur space.

On hiring: she found a high school senior taking community college classes for afternoon shifts. Still recruiting for mornings. Plus, she needs someone for 2-3 days/week to do backend book processing—sorting donations, prepping inventory for nonprofit book sales, different skill set than retail.

Storage is full. Books are in her garage. The second location can't come soon enough.

Current Book Count: ~15,000+

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Links mentioned:

• Submit a book request
• Ethan Joella - fiction author, new book: The Top of the World
• River Bend Bookshop West Hartford CT