Corinne Vasseur did not want to become another bookstore selling espresso to survive. After watching two straight years of flat book sales, she installed a café counter at Ledger & Leaf Books anyway.
Corinne Vasseur, who has owned Ledger & Leaf Books for close to two decades, said she resisted adding food or drink service for years, wary of diluting the bookstore’s identity as a place for browsing and civic gatherings rather than a coffee shop that happens to sell books. She said declining margins on physical book sales, driven partly by online competition, eventually forced the decision. “I held out longer than most independent bookstores,” Vasseur said. “I finally accepted that book sales alone don’t cover rent on Vale Avenue anymore, not the way they used to.”
A modest build-out
The new café counter, tucked into a corner previously used for a children’s reading nook, offers espresso drinks, pastries from a Cedar Hollow bakery, and a handful of light lunch items. Vasseur said she deliberately kept the build-out small, both to preserve floor space for books and to limit her financial exposure if the addition failed to draw customers. “I didn’t want to bet the whole store on this,” she said. “If it doesn’t work, I wanted to be able to undo it without too much damage.”
Early results have been encouraging, according to Vasseur, who said café sales in the addition’s first six weeks accounted for roughly 18 percent of the store’s total revenue, higher than she had projected. She said the café has also appeared to extend how long customers linger in the store, a change she believes has modestly increased impulse book purchases as well. “People used to come in, find what they wanted, and leave,” she said. “Now some of them sit down with a coffee and end up browsing for another twenty minutes. That’s twenty more minutes for a book to catch their eye.”
I was skeptical when I heard they were putting in an espresso machine. I come to a bookstore to get away from that kind of thing. But I’ll admit, I’ve bought two more books than I would have because I was already sitting there with a coffee and didn’t feel like leaving.
Warren Buckley, longtime Ledger & Leaf Books customer
Not everyone is convinced
Warren Buckley, a longtime customer who has attended the store’s author events for years, said he initially worried the café addition would change the bookstore’s character, a concern he said has only partly eased since the counter opened. “It’s still recognizably the same store,” Stennis said. “But I do notice more people on laptops now, taking up a table for two hours over one coffee. That’s a different kind of customer than the store used to attract.”
Vasseur said she has fielded similar concerns from a handful of longtime customers, along with some questions about whether the café competes directly with The Millhouse Café, the longtime Vale Avenue coffee shop a few doors down. She said she has tried to differentiate the offering by keeping the menu smaller and framing the counter explicitly as secondary to the bookstore rather than a standalone café. “I’m not trying to take Felix’s customers,” Vasseur said, referring to Millhouse Café owner Felix Amara. “I’m trying to give my own customers a reason to stay a little longer.”
Theresa Nakamura, executive director of the Bellwater Chamber of Commerce, said the bookstore’s move fits a pattern the chamber has watched play out across Vale Avenue as independent retailers add secondary revenue streams to survive rising rents. She pointed to the bookstore’s approaching twentieth anniversary on Vale Avenue as evidence of its staying power even as its business model shifts. “Twenty years on this street is not nothing,” Nakamura said. “Corinne’s adapting instead of closing. That’s exactly the kind of adaptation we want to see more of.”
Vasseur said the bookstore’s civic role, including hosting the monthly gallery nights Vale Avenue merchants recently launched, has not changed despite the new counter, and that she still intends to prioritize author events and community forums over expanding food service further. “The café pays some bills,” she said. “It’s not going to become the reason people come here. The books still have to be the reason.”
- The café counter’s first six weeks accounted for roughly 18 percent of the store’s total revenue.
- Owner Corinne Vasseur deliberately kept the build-out small to limit financial exposure.
- The store continues to prioritize author events and civic forums as its core identity, Vasseur said.
Stennis said he remains cautiously supportive of the change, so long as it does not crowd out the store’s book-focused identity over time. “I’ll keep coming for the books either way,” he said. “I just hope this doesn’t turn into one of those places where you walk in five years from now and can’t find the books for all the tables.”
Vasseur said she has no plans to expand the café footprint further, even if revenue continues to outperform her projections. “I know exactly how this story goes if I’m not careful,” she said. “The café creeps a little further into the store every year until one day it’s a café that also sells a few books. I’d rather stay small and stay a bookstore.”