Barnes and Noble Opening New Stores

[Alpha8472]

I saw signs announcing a new Barnes and Noble in ritzy Downtown Walnut Creek, California. The original huge 2 story Barnes and Noble a few hundred feet away opened in 1997 and closed in 2016.

Rents have gone down in the past couple of years. Now businesses are coming back with offers of low rent. This new location is a 2 story location that was formerly Forever 21.

Many stores that closed a few years ago due to high rent are coming back. Häagen-Dazs is opening up a new store in Downtown.

[lake52]

Barnes and Nobles has been opening some very upscale stores lately. The Folsom Palladio store has a full restaurant in it. I’d imagine in Walnut Creek they’ll be doing something similar.

Here is their restaurants website - https://www.barnesandnoblekitchen.com/locations/

[Alpha8472]

The new store will not be that big. I don't believe it has enough room for a restaurant. It might have room for a small cafe. We will see. A new Barnes and Noble opened up a few years ago in nearby Concord. That one only has a small cafe.

[mjhale]

The Ashburn, VA store is one of B&N's small format stores. It is also one of the stores that has the restaurant concept in it. An article from the Washington Business Journal at the store's opening notes the total store size is only 17,000 square feet. The restaurant takes up a quarter of that space. I don't think of a book store as a place that I would go to get a full meal. The cafe with small stuff and drinks is a better model I think. Makes it easier to linger around the store and possibly buy some stuff. However with audiobooks, eBooks and Amazon the amount of people buying books in stores is way down. The couple of times I have been in the Ashburn B&N the selection is mostly new releases, major authors and categories that are either hot a that time (theme month for example) or popular types of books for the area. Lots of political and social stuff at the Ashburn store. But you aren't going to find that odd ball book or related interest you might have found in a full size B&N or the old Borders stores. For that you'd have to go online. And why would I order and pick up in store when I can have ti shipped to my house. The restaurant isn't that much of a draw to me.

[buckguy]

Sounds like a somewhat smaller version of the stores they have left. They never went into music in the same way as Borders and other than some of their NYC stores, I never saw a B&N that was a truly full-line store like the larger "Flagship" Borders stores or regional chains like Joseph-Beth. I think they learned from their college stores how to sell more non-book merchandise than other stores and how to segment what they sold. They used to have better newsstands than Borders when people still bought magazines. They also had some depth in areas like travel (also selling a lot of maps), but not necessarily in genres like detective mysteries which were sold in lots of places like airports. B&N also seemed to add coffee shop areas earlier and more aggressively than other chains.

Borders started out as more of a full-line store. I went to the original in Ann Arbor and its larger incarnation in the former Jacobson's department store nearby. It was a place where you could find surprising variety and depth. It was a standout in a city full of good non-collegiate book stores. They couldn't replicate all of the idiosyncrasies of the original, like bring your dog into the store, but their DNA was more of a real book store than B&N and they wound up with Waldens to serve as their store for more casual readers.

There are scattered indies that have done well mixing restaurants and bookstores like Kramerbooks in DC which has been around since the 70s or 80s. It was bought by the &pizza guy a few years ago. Even when the food went down hill as it did in the '00s, they still drew a lot of people for food and books. They outlived the other bookstores in the neighborhood which were picked off by the 9/11 downturn in tourism and then the full impact of Amazon.

[Brian Lutz]

Another reopening store to report: The Barnes and Noble in Crossroads Bellevue closed several years ago, and the space was taken over by a World Market. B&N is reopening a new store in a different location at Crossroads next to the Old Navy in a space that has at various times been occupied by Bartell Drugs, Famous Footwear and Ulta Beauty. The space the store is going into would seem to suggest something roughly the size of what a Waldenbooks or B. Dalton in a mall would have been, maybe slightly bigger than that..

[Alpha8472]

A new Barnes and Noble store opened up in Walnut Creek, California at the beginning of September. The original 2 story store closed in 2016. The new store is practically across the street from the old location in a former Forever 21.

There is no cafe, but it is larger than another Barnes and Noble that opened a few years ago in nearby Concord, California. The focus seems to be on books, but there is a toys and games section. There are areas to sit and read.

The lighting is bright and it is provided by many spotlights. There are no fluorescent lights.

There are magazines as well.

The store is open 9 AM to 8 PM Monday through Saturday and 10 to 8 on Sundays.

The old store had a huge cafe with a large seating area. It was always very popular and the Starbucks drinks and Cheesecake Factory food brought in many customers. Apparently, cafe workers are not a good use of employees in a labor shortage. The old store used to be open until 11 PM. Barnes and Noble has really limited hours now.

[SamSpade]

On August 31 the company opened a new location that like Walnut Creek could be perceived as a replacement store. After securing a large space across the street from their previous real estate, the company has opened in a former Best Buy in Hillsboro, Oregon. It is really a lovely store.

There is a B&N Cafe in this location with the usual offerings, which is a change from the previous location. The original store was attached to a regular Starbucks O&O location.

[Alpha8472]

Barnes and Noble is opening 30 new stores. They previously barely opened one a year.

The company is also offering a new two tiered rewards program. There is a paid rewards membership and now there will be a free one. Borders had a free rewards program.

https://chainstoreage.com/barnes-noble- ... ty-program