Root & Press, a café and bookshop near Tatnuck Square in Worcester, Mass., will be closing its current location and moving to 156 Shrewsbury St. soon after the new year, the Worcester Business Journal reported. Owners Richard Collins and Nicole Cote opened the shop on Chandler St. in 2019. The larger space will allow the shop to expand its retail options as well as seating capacity.
"We're going to miss the neighborhood," said Collins in a recent license commission meeting where the move was approved. "We looked all over to find a spot in that neighborhood, but nothing seemed to work out."
In a newsletter sent to customers, Collins and Cote said they had bittersweet feelings about moving away from their regulars on the West Side, the Telegram & Gazette reported.
"We will never forget the support that kept us afloat through our opening, nor will we forget the acts of generosity as we navigated through Covid," the owners said. "After opening, we quickly realized that the space we had committed to was not sufficient for the long-term establishment of our store. The kitchen is so tight! And there are not enough tables! And people can't browse while others wait for food!"
The new space will be three times larger for Root & Press, and they wrote that they plan to use it to offer more books, more seating and a more relaxed browsing experience, adding: "When we had our first child, someone much smarter than me told me that the days would be long, but the years would be short. I think it is an apt saying for anything you dedicate a lot of your time and energy toward, and we hope to look back some day at our time on Shrewsbury Street with the same sort of amazement as we will look back at our first home."