After more than four years of planning, owner Noëlle Santos is set to open The Lit. Bar, an independent bookstore and wine bar in the Bronx, N.Y., this Saturday on Independent Bookstore Day, Bookselling This Week reported.
Located in the Mott Haven neighborhood in the South Bronx, the Lit. Bar resides in a 1,700-square-foot space that features chandeliers, a 14-foot tree and several giant graffiti murals. The inventory consists of around 4,000 titles for children, teens and adults, and the shop is peppered with a variety of specialty displays with names like "Dear White People," consisting of books on race relations, and "Mind Right, Money Right," devoted to self-help books.
The bar, meanwhile, serves wine, beer, cider and an assortment of non-alcoholic drinks, along with a seasonal food menu. The bar itself is actually made of used books donated by community members. Santos told BTW that she plans to create a buy-back program for books purchased at the store, which would allow her to keep the inventory more affordable while also maintaining a curatorial edge. At the start, Santos will have three part-time staff members who will help with both bookselling and tending bar, and over the weeks and months ahead she plans to bring on more staffers.
Santos has a slate of events scheduled for the store's opening weekend. She held a pre-opening party and first look at the store on Thursday night, while a ribbon-cutting is planned for Saturday morning. Also on Saturday Santos will have a DJ and photo booth, as well as a party that night. On Sunday, Santos will debut Kiddie Lit'r, the store's children's book club and events program. And on Tuesday, Santos will be in conversation with Forbes contributor and author Sara Bliss.
Santos's bookselling journey began back in fall 2014, after Barnes & Noble closed its only location in the Bronx. In early 2015 she attended the Paz & Associates "Owning a Bookstore" course, and later that year began training at various bookstores around New York. In 2016 she won second place in the New York Public Library's StartUP! Business Plan Competition, for which she received a prize of $7,500. During 2017 she launched a book club called Readers & Shakers that has since brought in over 900 members, and ran an Indiegogo campaign that raised more than $170,000. Last year she left her full-time job and began the laborious process of building out her store, acquiring the proper construction permits and obtaining a liquor license.
"I had no experience, I never worked in retail or bookselling, but I was embraced by the bookselling community," Santos told BTW. "I'm so grateful to everyone who came together to give me membership and the resources to do this amazing thing that not only opened doors for myself, but through me has opened doors for so many other people. And they didn't have to. I can't imagine any other industry that is as tight-knit or as generous with information."