It's been said the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. Bookstore owners Marty and Jan Cummins of central Florida discovered that a creative twist on the familiar adage works for their business as well: reaching the culture- and book-loving crowd through a gourmet restaurant.
"We're a restaurant that sells books, not a bookstore that sells food," Marty Cummins, co-owner of Chapters in Winter Park, told PW. "We consider ourselves book dealers, but the restaurant is the means that allows us to do what we love, which is selling books." In spite of that designation, Cummins said he plans to expand Chapters' new-book inventory from a mere 200 titles to 20,000 titles over the coming months. The store's used book inventory is already at 30,000. The restaurant area seats approximately 30 people.
Today Chapters sits in a new location that opened in September on trendy, tree-lined Park Avenue in downtown Winter Park, an upscale suburb of Orlando. But the bookstore got its start in 1990 in another quaint central Florida hamlet, College Park, after Marty Cummins lost his livelihood and nearly lost his life.
An attorney and real estate developer by trade, Cummins was hospitalized 15 years ago with a near-fatal illness, and the resulting medical bills wiped him out financially. He recovered, but found himself alone and broke. When he met his future wife, Jan, they both knew they wanted to make a life together and have children—but their livelihood choices seemed limited. "We decided to find a business that would allow us to raise a child in the business, not in day care," Cummins told PW. Both avid readers, they decided to open a used bookstore in College Park.
A year later, the couple took their fledgling business to the revitalized downtown Orlando district and the store hit its stride when the couple opened a full-service café, called Books & Bread Café. They saw immediate results. They hired a gourmet chef, played up the "bookish" angle in their menu and served dishes that attracted a word-of-mouth following.
That's when Chapters first started generating a buzz in the arts community—and when the Cumminses earned a reputation as significant contributors and leaders in that community. Riding the cultural wave they helped establish in downtown Orlando, they founded the only general-interest book festival in the city and created the Jack Kerouac Writers in Residence Project. Through a tax-free foundation, the couple raised more than $300,000 of "in-kind" and cash donations, allowing them to purchase the College Park house where Jack Kerouac lived while writing On the Road. The project allows writers to stay there rent-free for three-month writing retreats. (Further information on the project can be found at: www.kerouacproject.org.)
After a little over three years downtown, Marty and Jan decided it was time to purchase a building in a permanent location. The couple bought a building just off the main thoroughfare in College Park and threw themselves into the business of expanding Chapters' borders even wider.
They started featuring one-actor dinner theatre nights, gourmet dinners, wine dinners and other themed events. While the cultural additions to Chapters were successful, Orlando's city government made a decision that nearly destroyed the bookstore's bottom line. The main thoroughfare through College Park was downgraded from a four-lane to a two-lane street with bicycle paths. "Our business was cut in half in 24 hours," said Marty. "There was gridlock virtually all day long. That kept people from coming into College Park, and the town was never a significant part of our business anyway. We added live music three or four nights a week to keep the doors open, and we did keep them open, but still it was not worth the effort."
Chapters was struggling so badly that the couple decided the best thing to do would be close up shop, wait till their daughter went to college in a few years and then move to another major city to reopen.
A perfectly timed call from Chip Weston, Winter Park's economic and cultural development director, changed all that. "Chip made it clear that they felt a bookstore was mandatory for Winter Park's downtown to reach its potential," Marty says. The city courted Chapters and helped the Cumminses find a prime location on Park Avenue. The bookstore reopened for business in late September to dramatic results.
"We do as much business in a good day as we did in a week in College Park," Cummins said after a month at the store's new location. "All of our customers who stopped coming to College Park [because of the traffic gridlock] are now coming here, plus we have pedestrian business. The sales goals we hoped to attain in 12 months, we've already attained in three weeks."
The new Chapters sports more than just a trendy new location: the bookstore now carries frontlist titles as well as used books and book-related gifts. One whole wall in the dining area features about 150 face-out covers of bestselling titles from the three major book lists (New York Times, Wall Street Journal and PW). In a back room, and up a winding staircase, bookstore browsers can find an additional 30,000 used books in the spacious new facility, which, at 7,500 square feet, more than doubles the size of the former store. Diners get 30% off the purchase price of new and used books, and they earn store credit for marketable used books they haul into the store.
Chapters boasts several hundred regular customers now across a demographic scale that spans from low-middle-income to very wealthy. The store will sponsor the Third Annual Central Florida Book & Music Festival on Park Avenue in April 2004 and plans to do book signings every Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Notable authors who have signed at Chapters in the past include science fiction author Ben Bova, Larry Pontius, Steve Allen, and Kerouac allies David Amram and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Ironically, used books still provide the store's bottom-line profit. "Used books, we expect, will produce more to the net bottom line than new books or the restaurant, because the gross profit is the same as the net profit for used books. But promoting the restaurant is what makes it all work—it pays the overhead and brings in customers for our books."
