Same, Same, but Different

The front room of our shop, newly reorganised with books on shelves and cards on racks

'It's overwhelming!' said my friend Marco, shaking his head as he took in the full scale of the large shop, and endless stock, we have taken into our care. Marco has big East London Italian energy, so for him to be finding it all a bit much really says something about the project we are doing. To say '70,000 books' to someone is a different to them actually seeing 70,000 books, and his shocked face was not the first we had seen (or indeed worn ourselves). Yes, I said, it's a lot, closing the door on the storage area for now.

It was the evening before opening and Marco had driven our beautiful red Gaggia coffee machine up from London, with a matching red grinder he had found, and we were waiting for the plumber to come back with a part to get the machine fitted in time for opening the next day. The shop was as ready as we were going to get it and our last remaining helpers were finishing up with vacuuming, washing the windows, shoving last piles of books out of the way and cleaning the toilets. The only thing left to do was to organise the tables and chairs piled up around the place into some semblance of inviting order. We had run out of energy to even think about what should go where and it struck me that Marco, a veteran of the hospitality industry, and someone who had never been here before and so had no memory of what it used to look like, was the perfect person to sort that out for us. We had time... I put him to work.

A couple of hours later and the tables and chairs were in their new positions, the machine was plumbed in, the helpers had gone home and Marco and I were sitting in my house with a takeaway pizza and a bottle of wine. 'With a place that big,' he said, 'it's best just to get open. If you waited until you are ready, you'd never open at all.' This was what Polly and I were thinking, just get open, and let the customers know that it was a work in progress. We needed to start getting some revenue in and, although it had felt like a hard push, we just had to commit, put our dusters down and face the public. Scary, but time to let this dream out into the real world. One last night of mostly not sleeping, early morning grocery shopping, and then we would strap a smile on and open that door.

Time to do this.

Opening day, and footfall was gentle and steady. Every customer gasped as they walked through the front door and saw the newly cleared out front room, with its acres of floor space, neatly shelved books and a distinct lack of a forest of card spinners. It looks so big! It's so tidy! It's so much better, they all said. Lots of them then qualified it with 'we loved Aardvark but... this is much less overwhelming and cluttered'. More gasps as they walked into the cafe area, which looks so bright and open and airy now. 'Was this window always here?' Look upstairs, we said. We've put sofas up there. Don't mind the piles of books behind the curtain. We'll get to them.

Marco taught us how to use the coffee machine, terrifying our brand new staff ('no, like this with the milk' bash-bash thunk-thunk hiss), terrorising customers ('we never do extra hot coffee, it ruins the taste!') and producing absolutely delicious coffee that we worried we wouldn't be able to replicate. The coffee machine felt like we had suddenly got ourselves a racehorse when all we had ever done was ride a donkey at the seaside before (what had we got ourselves into? Oh good, another thing to worry about!). Alice's lovely cakes went down well, and we had lots and lots of nice comments about how glad people were that it was open again. People even bought books, including our tiny selection of new books, which are selling well. Polly's mystery books are flying out, people giggling at the descriptions and telling us they had seen them on social media (it works!).

The following days have been similar, finding our rhythm, learning that we can make delicious coffee ourselves, organising the books more to our liking, baking some of our own cakes, talking to customers who have read this blog (!!) and liked our instagram posts and seeing some people come back again - repeat customers, hurrah! We have had some wonderful conversations about books, and have ditched the soup because no one bought it (you're missing out, it was very tasty. We'll bring it back another time). It has been mostly very lovely.

With all change, however, inevitably there are peoples' reactions to change, and feelings about change. We are being compared with a much-loved institution, and it was always going to be a hard act to follow. Many years ago I spent a day covering a shopkeeper in her much-loved shop shortly after she announced it was closing. I just need a day off, she said, a little break away from the grief of all my customers about my shop. It's my loss, she said, and I am having to comfort them. This is very much on my mind at the moment. As nice as people have been, and as sure as we are about the way we want to do things, we are also running an exercise in change management, and holding a space for everyone to adjust. We are hearing a lot about how things used to be done, both good and bad. It is hard to know what to say to these comments - we were very fond of Aardvark too, but we are going to do things differently because... we are different, and we are having feelings about it all too.

It is still a bookshop, but not THAT bookshop. It is still a cafe, but not THAT cafe. We have made the choices we have made. We hope you like them. Please be gentle, we are very tired.

Rachel