WORCESTER—Walking into Root & Press’s new location on Shrewsbury Street Thursday, it was clear what the café and bookstore was able to gain with the move. Space.
In the Tatnuck Square location, which opened in May 2019, 12 or 13 chairs were squeezed in the middle of bookshelves in one room. While the size of that location gave it a cozy feel, co-owner Rich Collins said he and his wife Nicole Cote wanted to keep that feel but expand to a space where people could reliably get a table to study, read, and eat.
“We were never going to be able to continue in our old spot…we were suffocating,” Collins told the Worcester Guardian Thursday. The small size made it difficult to staff and get food deliveries, according to Collins.
The Shrewsbury location has multiple rooms with nearly 40 seats and is nearly four times the size of the Tatnuck Square space, including storage space in the basement of the Shrewsbury Street location.
When you enter the café the first room is focused on food with a counter to order, multiple tables, and one bookshelf. As you move into the other rooms you’ll encounter multiple shelves of books, gifts and cards, as well as more seating, including at the bar.
The bar, which has antique typewriters as decoration, was here when Collins and Cote rented it and Collins said they have no plans to add alcoholic drinks to their menu, but they are looking into offering BYOB on poetry nights and for book clubs.
There is a lot of competition on Shrewsbury Street when it comes to dinner and drinks, Collins said, so they are going to focus on the “a.m. coffee business,” but will be open later a couple of nights a week for people who want to come in for coffee before or after dinner. On Thursday and Friday the café will be open until 8 p.m.
The larger space allowed the couple to more than double their inventory of books and add additional gift items for sale. Those gift items include products from Worcester Candle which lost its own physical space in a May 2023 fire. The cafe is also offering Worcester-themed gifts including mugs with maps of the city and cross stiches depicting “Entering Worcester” signs.
The larger space also allowed the cafe to expand its menu. In addition to the breakfast sandwiches, pastries, paninis, and bowls they offered at the Tatnuck Square location, they have been able to add burgers and ramen to their full menu. They added more gluten-free and vegan items as well, according to Collins.
The Shrewsbury Street location had its soft opening on Wednesday.
“We just wanted to make sure everything worked and we weren’t setting ourselves back before we welcomed people in,” Collins said.
The soft opening went “pretty well” and there were no major issues, according to Collins. The cafe then posted its opening hours for Thursday and Friday on its Instagram page.
Collins and Cote closed the Tatnuck Square location just before Christmas and it took them about a month to set up 156 Shrewsbury Street. They were able to do the set up relatively quickly since the location already had an established kitchen.
The couple wanted to keep the bookstore aspect of their business when they moved locations because Collins said he believes bookstores are “terribly important for neighborhoods.”
There’s not much left in the world you can do for free, according to Collins, and with the new kids room they were able to set up parents can come in and read with their children on the floor.
“I think it’s important for people to keep reading books,” Collins said. “I think it helps kids for sure but it strengthens even adult minds.”
Collins said he also likes the ambiance of having a café with books and added that not many bookstores can match their food and drink selection.
In addition to having book clubs and poetry nights, Collins said they’ll be looking into having author events, which were difficult to hold in their old location since they had to shut the whole place down. Since the new location has multiple rooms, they’ll be able to have author events and still stay open for food.
The café and bookstore will be open from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Wednesday, 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday, and from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturdays. The business will be closed on Sundays for the near future as they continue to set up the business, according to Collins.
Kiernan Dunlop is an award-winning journalist who has spent the past five years reporting in Worcester, New Bedford and Antigua and Barbuda. She’s been published in Bloomberg, USA Today, Canary Media, MassLive and the New Bedford Standard Times, among other outlets. She can be contacted at kdunlop@theworcesterguardian.org
