Coffee + books
Inspiration
This week, the refreshed Exclusive Books store in Johannesburg’s Hyde Park Corner (left) caught our eye.
In particular, we love the incorporation of a restaurant – EB Social Kitchen & Bar – within the store.
Food & books feels like a natural fusion to us; a bit like cheese & wine, leather & tobacco, or a cold day & a log fire, perhaps.
It’s a similar story with coffee & magazines. Take our neighbour, Magazine Brighton, for example, which sells its own blend of coffee beans, freshly roasted at our local Brighton coffee shop, Coffee At 33.
The cookery /recipe book genre is well-established. Conversely, it seems, we are now witnessing an expanding genre of bookstore-eatery.
Coffee & books is a theme explored further (and rather beautifully, might we add) by writer Anna Brone in this blog for Sprudge, the coffee news & culture publication.
One could pontificate that whilst food fuels the body, books provide sustenance for the mind. However, we think the reason they complement each other is more simple: both books and food /coffee provide a momentary escape from the busier side of life. And from a design perspective, there’s a practical aspect too: food /coffee concepts help break up a bookstore’s wall of tomes.
EB Social Kitchen & Bar sits within Exclusive Books' Hyde Park Corner, Johannesburg store
Exclusive Books has reworked its Hyde Park Corner, Johannesburg bookstore
Eating areas provide a break between bookshelves, like here at Exclusive Books
