Asking for help after Hurricane Milton
10/15/2024 - we asked the community for our support
Dear Book + Bottle Friends and Fam:
It goes without saying that this has been an extraordinarily difficult time for St. Pete and large swaths of Florida and the South. When we open our doors we hear your stories and feel your fatigue. Our hearts couldn’t be heavier for the people that make St. Pete our home. We usually take pride in the “Book + Bottle Magic” that allows our space to feel like a beautiful escape. But, for a minute, we need to pull back the veil and ask for help.
Book + Bottle is a small business. We aren’t bankrolled by private investors, we keep our inventory lean and strategic, and in the grand scheme of things we are still a very young business. The “Book + Bottle Magic” you feel every day is cultivated by our amazing staff and the energy that our customers bring into the shop. Despite the Instagrammable nature of our store, we often face challenges just like any other small business in town.
While we are so lucky that Book + Bottle as a physical structure survived the storm, the unprecedented closures, event cancellations, and business disruptions are wreaking havoc on our small, independent business. Many local businesses are facing the same problem: Summer is already our slowest season and rather than ramping up for the holidays like we normally would, we've been hit with back-to-back hurricanes. It has depleted our funds and morale.
Book + Bottle proudly employs 13 people and our first priority has always been taking care of them. We work to pay livable wages, provide health care, and prioritize their mental health. For them, and for so many of our loyal customers, Book + Bottle is a home. Now, as we face the reality of what these hurricanes have done to us financially, we ask you for help so that we can pay our employees, our rent, and keep offering you the Book + Bottle magic into the future.
If you are able to help, here are some ways you can support us:
Keep shopping with us. Whether it’s a book or bottle, cup of coffee, or glass of wine, it all helps.
Purchase a gift card. Gift cards help provide immediate cash flow when it is most needed. If you can’t make it into the shop today, you can still purchase an E-Gift card!
Pre-Order a book you’re really excited about today (or your holiday wine!) - pre-ordering also helps with cash flow if you pay for the items now! See below for some exciting new books coming out in the next weeks and months. Email our book manager or wine manager to place an order.
Want to help more? Donate to Book + Bottle’s Venmo.
We fully intend, in spite of everything, to keep our doors open. We will need your flexibility, support, and understanding now more than ever. We’ve always said that books and wine are a magical combination, but it’s more than that. In times like these, we’re also looking for small moments of joy. It’s Book + Bottle’s mission to provide that today and every day. Thank you for everything you already do to keep us in business. Be sure to check in on all your favorite local businesses during this difficult time.
We love you, St. Pete.
the book + bottle family
10/15/2023 - 10/23/2024 - the community shows it's love for Book + Bottle through an outpouring of love and generous support
10/23/2023 - Thanks to all your support, Book + Bottle gets back on track and shares a heartfelt thank you and spares transparency about the business
Hello again, Book + Bottle Friends and Fam:
To all of you who showed up for us over the past week -- shopping with us, buying gift cards, pre-ordering books, sending us your precious dollars through Venmo, or sharing kind words and empathy – thank you, from the bottom of our hearts. You helped us get through a precarious moment in time and get back on track. For that, our team is beyond grateful and incredibly moved. We still have a long road ahead, but we're moving forward enthusiastically thanks to your kindness and generosity.
We know it's tough for everyone right now - some folks lost everything - some twice in one month - and the anxiety and trauma the city is experiencing is something we've never seen in St. Pete before. While we didn't lose our shop, we did lose over a week of revenue, and right on the coattails of closures from Helene, and after a historically slow summer. For small, independent businesses like Book + Bottle, cash flow is queen - and with no sales revenue, yet continuing expenses (payroll, rent, sales tax, inventory), that type of disruption can be fatal, as we've unfortunately seen too many times recently. And yet you showed up for us and you really made a difference. You showed that you cared and gave us hope to continue. And continue we will.
Amongst our team, transparency is one of our core values, so as our loyal customers and friends, I thought I'd extend that transparency to you too to tell you a little more about our business and why this happened.
As we shared with you last week, we're a small, family business with no outside investors - we opened the business on a budget and have since strived to operate leanly. What does "leanly" mean? It means doing things ourselves (we've done our own plumbing, accounting, marketing, and all our own cleaning. We even came in late at night and scraped old plaster off the walls during construction to save money!). It means strategically allocating the team's resources so we can do more without hiring more (like opening later on Tuesday so the team can place orders or doing events on Mondays). It means renting the smallest possible space and maximizing its value (we don't even have an office - you've probably seen the managers placing their orders or running reports while sitting at the bar!). It means spending only on the essentials (like the best wine and books) and being thrifty with everything else (did you know our fabulous bookshelves are from Ikea and a lot of our bar equipment was purchased second hand?).
I had to remind myself, because it feels so long ago, that we opened at the start of the Pandemic, so we're no strangers to disruption and chaos. The shop was closed extendedly and repeatedly in early 2020 because of government safety regulations, and intermittently when the staff had a Covid scare. Since the very beginning, we've had to operate leanly because we never knew when the business would be forced to close or if/when it would reopen again. As the challenge of Covid was put behind us, we relished in the ability to give our team regular schedules, we put our full timers on an industry-competitive salary, and we gave them good benefits to make the impacts of that chaos a little more bearable. We did everything in our power to pay our part timers even when the store was closed - from scheduling an extra inventory, doing a deep cleaning, or tackling a pet project - if we could, we allowed the team to make up those hours in another way. Imagine how hard the Pandemic was, or these storms are, to endure - that trauma and anxiety is exponentially exacerbated when you also have to worry whether or not you're going to get a paycheck.
This time around, with our lean operating mentality and still without deep pockets, it quickly became apparent at just how dramatic this recent week of closures would be on our business - expenses were still being drawn from our account at the scale of tens of thousands of dollars (inventory purchases, sales tax, payroll, and more), but no revenue was coming in to replace it. When we reached out last week, we were really scared about what this would mean for our business.
We've never missed a payroll at Book + Bottle, and thanks to you, we didn't miss this time either. Twice before in our history, early in the pandemic, we got close, and I moved what little money I had in my personal account over to the business, forfeiting my own pay for the sake of the team. The idea that you could not pay the people who are doing the work is something I can't even conceive of. I never want to get close to that again.
You all helped us get back on track, and we're choosing to see this as a huge opportunity. We've realized firsthand the imperative of a financial safety net, and we are immediately prioritizing putting money aside for the next rainy day, and we have been able to start this account thanks to your generosity. We're looking at the business with fresh eyes and reevaluating our hours, our menu, and our inventory to see how we can be even more efficient without compromising what means most to you and more resilient in the face of these worsening storms. If something like this ever happens again, we want to be in a position to feel secure in our own business and able to help others in need.
While we are so grateful that you helped us get through that really tough moment right after the storm, we still have a big hill to climb. The most impactful way you can support us and other local, independent businesses is by continuing to patronize our businesses. We hope you'll keep popping in when you need a treat and we hope you'll think of us for your holiday gifts this year.
My final plea to anyone who is listening - remember that everyone is going through something, and your actions matter: take care of each other, shop local, and be kind.
With deep, heartfelt gratitude,
the book + bottle family