Nearly two months after opening in Toronto’s new Mirvish Village development, the popular liquor-licensed bookstore Book Bar has quickly established itself as a literary hub for the city.
Prior to its opening, the store had built strong online buzz on TikTok and Instagram, leading staff to anticipate high demand for romance and fantasy titles, which tend to dominate the realms of BookTok and Bookstagram. So far, that hasn’t been the case.
“It turns out that actually our biggest seller is still literary fiction,” assistant operations manager Daniel Roberts says, citing the neighborhood’s proximity to the University of Toronto.
Roberts, who previously worked at another Toronto bookstore, Book City, and the staff are leaning hard into the local literary scene; he recently took to the store’s Instagram page to promote William Maxwell’s 1979 novel So Long, See You Tomorrow, which he recommended for fans of John Williams’s 1965 novel Stoner.
The store occupies 2,600 square feet across two floors of a converted Victorian-era rowhouse. The sleek, elegant space was designed by Toronto-based DesignAgency, with curved bookshelves, a stone bar and an upstairs mezzanine, the Green Room, that converts between lounge seating and a 30-chair, theater-style event setup.
Book Bar is co-owned by Tom Freeman, who previously worked in hospitality, and Robin Storfer, a mental health professional who specializes in treating ADHD. They met as neighbors.
“We would talk about how much we loved the idea of a good book, a good conversation and a good drink, but couldn’t quite find a place that brought all those things together,” Storfer says.
She went on to explain that the concept was largely inspired by the Book Club Bar in New York’s East Village. Its owners, Erin Neary and Nat Esten, served as mentors to Storfer, who flew to meet them twice while researching the idea. Storfer then visited numerous independent booksellers across Canada—including Blue Heron Books in Uxbridge, Ont., Cedar Canoe Books in Huntsville, Ont., and Iron Dog Books in Vancouver—for further inspiration.
The store joins a Toronto community that offers numerous independent, literary-minded bookstores, including Flying Books, Queen Books, and Type Books, but none in the immediate vicinity, which also happens to be where many of Toronto’s literati and publishing personalities live.
Book Bar, perhaps because of its name, is often confused with an outpost of the New York Book Club Bar, which has a second location in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood. Storfer stresses that the store is “an independently owned and operated, original Canadian concept—not at all an extension of anywhere else.”
Confusion can also extend to how first-time visitors navigate the space. Because much of Book Bar’s audience discovers the store through social media before walking in, staff station a greeter at the door to explain the concept, says operations manager Sarah Labrie, who is a former sales and marketing director for Kids Can Press and previously worked at Penguin Random House and Scholastic.
“Customers regularly ask whether the shelved books are for decoration, whether they can read one at a table and put it back, or take one home without paying,” she says. “Our concept really is new to them.”
The author event program at Book Bar is filling up. The store has already hosted Canadian bestseller Carley Fortune, who was interviewed as part of a media event tied to the store’s opening, and will host Shari Lapena, who is scheduled to launch her new novel, Getting Away with Murder, at the end of the month. There are also recurring events, such as Bored of Dating Apps (BODA), a singles’ event for which Book Bar is the exclusive Canadian partner, and Sip & Scholar, an academic lecture series.
The food and drink at the store doesn’t pander to the literary crowd, so much as allude to it, says Roberts; just one drink is named after a book—the Rosemary’s Baby, a rosemary-infused cocktail named for Ira Levin’s classic 1967 horror novel—while others are inspired by the arts, such as the Frida, a mezcal margarita. The venue enforces a laptop-free policy after 6 p.m. and is fully accessible.
Sideline merchandise, such as the custom Book Bar candle, scented with vanilla, leather, and sandalwood, and another called Book Boyfriend, meant to smell like a stolen hoodie with a whiff of cologne, has generated organic Instagram posts from customers, Storfer says. “And of course, the tote bags are a must-have,” adds Labrie.
Roberts believes that Book Bar’s success is tied to the character of Mirvish Village itself, where redevelopment brought in independently owned businesses rather than national chains.
“What makes a city vibrant isn’t the Harvey’s and the Wendy’s on the corner,” Roberts says. “It’s the mom-and-pop places. People know that, and they’re supporting us and they’re supporting books again. Books are cool. Books really are cool.”