Main Street Books has been part of downtown Minot, North Dakota, for nearly two decades.
When its longtime owner decided to sell, the person who eventually took over was not a distant investor or someone arriving with a completely new concept.
It was Lindsey Bertsch, who had worked there for 14 years.
After taking over the bookstore, Bertsch followed through on something she wanted to add to the business.
A café.
Ferdinand’s Café & Deli opened inside Main Street Books in April, serving specialty drinks and food alongside the shop’s books and community atmosphere.
It is a useful example of a question facing independent retailers everywhere:
If customers can buy the product online, why should they come to you?
Competing with ecommerce does not mean becoming ecommerce
A small independent bookstore cannot win by carrying more titles than the largest online retailer.
A neighbourhood gift shop cannot out warehouse a global marketplace.
A record store cannot promise every album ever released.
The mistake is assuming that means physical retail has lost.
Current evidence suggests something more interesting is happening.
Axios reported in July that the number of US bookstore companies increased from 2,010 in 2021 to 3,416 in 2025, a rise of about 70 percent, according to American Booksellers Association data.
It also reported that 73 percent of booksellers recorded higher sales in 2025.
Bookstores are increasingly being discussed not simply as retail outlets but as places for discovery, events, community and time away from screens.
That suggests the physical shop’s advantage may not be the transaction itself.
It may be everything around it.
Give people something that is difficult to put in a parcel
Main Street Books offers books, but Ferdinand’s Café gives people another reason to spend time there.
Those things reinforce each other.
Someone visits for lunch and notices a book.
Someone comes to browse and stays for coffee.
Someone attends an event and returns later for a gift.
The shop becomes useful for more than a single purchase.
Other retailers can apply the same thinking without opening a café.
A plant shop can run workshops.
A sewing store can host classes.
A specialist food retailer can offer tastings.
A record shop can hold listening evenings.
A maker can demonstrate how products are created.
A children’s retailer can host small activities.
The question is not:
What gimmick can I add?
It is:
What would make spending time here valuable?
Make the reason to visit visible before somebody arrives
This is where digital presence still matters.
A brilliant physical experience can remain invisible to somebody searching from their sofa.
If your website shows only an address and a few product photographs, a potential customer may never discover that Thursday is book club night, that you stock local makers, or that there is a café inside.
The website should communicate the reasons to visit.
Current events.
Opening hours.
Directions.
Parking information where relevant.
New arrivals.
Special collections.
Gift cards.
Services.
Ways to reserve or order something before travelling.
Quiet Star Studio’s Online Store and website services can extend a physical shop by allowing people to discover products, understand the experience and decide whether to buy online or visit in person.
Do not make customers choose between physical and digital
Someone discovers the business on Google.
They check the event calendar.
They visit on Saturday.
They buy a book.
Three months later they purchase a gift voucher online.
Then they return for an author event.
Those are not competing channels.
They are one customer relationship moving between places.
Main Street Books is particularly interesting because Bertsch inherited something customers already valued and expanded what the place could be.
That is a different form of innovation.
It does not ask a longstanding local business to throw away its character.
It asks what else that character can support.
Independent retail does not need to imitate the internet to remain relevant.
Sometimes its strongest response is to offer precisely what the internet cannot: presence, conversation, local knowledge, discovery and somewhere worth spending an afternoon.
If your shop has reasons people love visiting but those reasons are almost invisible online, Quiet Star Studio can help build a digital presence that supports the physical experience rather than competing with it.
Would Your Online Presence Give Someone a Reason to Visit Your Shop?
Main Street Books added a café to make the physical visit more valuable. Now check whether your own online presence actually communicates the reasons somebody should come through the door.