Sisters Danielle and Gabriel Davenport have been operating their concept BEM Books & More as an online bookstore and pop-up for several years. Now, they have inked a lease for a 1,500-square-foot space at 373 Lewis Avenue in Bed-Stuy, with plans to bring their first brick-and-mortar bookstore-cafe to the community.
The sisters launched BEM Books & More to focus on bringing Black food literature to the community.
“As sisters who really love food and really love books, we’d been thinking about starting a business together, and we were batting some ideas around,” Danielle told What Now New York. “And given the handful of wonderful culinary bookstores that exist and the incredible legacy of Black bookstores, we were thinking that there should be a place at the intersection between them that really gives people the opportunity to dig into the storytelling and the food aspect, and that is what set us on our journey.”
The Davenports began to formulate their concept several years ago, but just as they were gaining momentum with the idea, the pandemic hit. Instead of shelving the idea entirely to wait for the pandemic to pass, the sisters decided to pivot from a brick-and-mortar model, launching a website and beginning to do pop-ups and collaborations.
While their focus is on food literature, the sisters seek out books that explore food in a variety of ways. Their selection includes not only cookbooks, but also nonfiction, fiction, poetry and children’ s books that approach food as an experience or an element of culture.
“It felt like there was a really interesting and exciting opportunity to think broadly about what Black food literature could mean across genres and across the diaspora,” Danielle said. “As soon as we started thinking in that direction, it all kept snowballing and flowing in a really exciting way.”
The Davenports have been eyeing the space in Bed-Stuy for a couple years. Their vision is to transform the space into a retail bookstore, with the addition of a cafe-bar space. They also plan to have a kitchen, where they hope to host classes, demos and chef residency pop-ups. They look forward to hosting a variety of events and exploring new ways they can broach the intersection between food, culture and literature.
“One of the things that’s been so exciting for us is to learn where we fit within this exciting ecosystem of writers and chefs. There’s such a wonderful world on the culinary side of pop-ups and supper clubs,” Danielle said. “There’s just so much opportunity and so much room to be in community and grow together, and feeling that out in really organic ways and figuring out what the opportunities and windows are for us to really serve our community in helpful ways has been great.”
Build-out is still to come on the space, but for those who have attended BEM events before, the aesthetic will feel familiar. Gabrielle said they are looking forward to creating a permanent space that is “warm and inviting, and a place that invites discovery and learning new things.”
“We’ve been really blessed to be so well received by our community,” Gabrielle said. “As soon as we started making our events and making our offerings available to the public when it was safe to do so, it was like — exactly as Danielle was saying — this makes sense. People want to see this. Authors of the books that we carry are particularly excited and seem inspired by what we’re offering and how responsive we aim to be to them and their needs. So it’s been really wonderful, and has very much been the thing that has kept us going.”
The sisters just hosted a pre-opening event on Juneteenth to christen the space in Bed-Stuy prior to starting construction. They are hoping to open their doors this fall.
Moving forward, the Davenports are looking forward to putting deeper roots into the community and exploring new ideas, from collaborations to multimedia, to add to their programming.
“I think the idea of creating this physical home for the work that we can do all of these fun offshoots from as a stable staple base for us, is really an exciting idea,” Gabrielle said. “Especially at the intersection of these two industries that are so dynamic on their own, meaning food and beverage and the publishing industry — there are so many possibilities. The possibilities feel endless, which is really exciting. So we just have to get over this next hurdle of actually getting the doors open, and then we can get into all kinds of fun things.”
