BookBar, a beloved bookshop and wine bar, will close its doors for good at the end of next January, with the owner blaming fatigue and rising costs.
On Monday, owner Nicole Sullivan broke the news that her business at 4280 Tennyson St. will shutter on Jan. 31, 2023, following its 10th holiday season. After the COVID-19 pandemic put her and other entrepreneurs through the wringer, Sullivan said she’s now looking for a change.
“With nearly all costs of doing business on the rise, our expenses continue to outpace revenue,” she said in a statement. “It’s just no longer sustainable for the long-term.”
Although Sullivan said she’ll miss the community cultivated at the Berkeley neighborhood haunt, she’s “truly ready to move on, shift my focus, and definitely work less.”
Established in 2013, BookBar offers more than a selection of texts for purchase. It hosts events, including story times, poetry readings and book clubs, and feeds bibliophiles with a menu of hors d’oeuvres.
Sullivan had “no idea how long this business would last or if it would work at all when we opened,” she wrote in an open letter to her patrons posted on BookBar’s website.
She didn’t foresee the venture lasting longer than around a decade, adding that she experienced “an underlying feeling of relief” when BookBar was forced to shutter because of COVID-19 in March 2020. “No one was more surprised than I was when it started looking like BookBar would actually make it through the pandemic.”
Sullivan pointed to business costs skyrocketing “much faster than the prices of books, food, and beverage can keep pace.” In a blog post, she described the “final nail in the coffin” as Denver’s boost in minimum wage, set for the first day of next year.
Sullivan said, while she’s “certainly” not against the raise, her business can’t make it happen financially.
When BookBar first opened, “the minimum wage was $7.78,” Sullivan wrote. “In January it will increase to $17.29. That is roughly a 122% increase in the past 10 years.”
That point caused a slight stir on Twitter, with several accounts frowning on the reason.
Sullivan called booksellers’ inability to raise their book prices “one of the great failings” of the industry. “With apologies to my publisher friends, I would so much rather be able to control my own margins than jump through all of the hoops of an archaic system.”
Notably, the BookBar team will not sell the building. The business’ media contact didn’t immediately respond to a request for further comment.
Customers took to their keyboards to collectively mourn the eventual loss of the business on social media.
“This was really tough news to read. But I also totally understand every last one of your reasons,” wrote Denver resident Carmela LaVigna Coyle on a Facebook post published by BookBar. “THANK YOU for creating a dream bookstore for Denver readers and writers.”
Sullivan hopes “some other book lover with big ideas and an abundance of optimism” will enter the scene and fill the space left by BookBar’s absence.
She’ll dedicate more time to her children and husband, and continue with her other endeavors: The Bookies bookstore at 4315 E. Mississippi Ave., nonprofit organization BookGive and publisher BookBar Press.
