Old Town Cottonwood has wine-tasting rooms and restaurants with bars. Bind & Banter is a combined bookstore, coffee shop and bar lounge opening quietly on Tuesday in Old Town Cottonwood, pairing a full bar with books.
The Verde Independent describes Bind & Banter as a bookstore, coffee shop and bar lounge in Old Town Cottonwood.
Bind & Banter brings a bookstore, coffee shop and bar lounge together in Old Town Cottonwood.
A Space Built Around Readers, Not Just Readers' Drinks
Bind & Banter is described as a third space for bookworms and cocktail drinkers. The shop will pair a full bar with coffee, tea and books under one roof, per the same Verde Independent report. Customers can browse the shelves or sit at the bar.
An October 2025 survey from the Pew Research Center found that 75% of U.S. adults had read all or part of at least one book in the previous 12 months, and that print books remained the most popular format at 64%, even as e-book use climbed to 31% of all adults and 41% of adults under 30.
Opening Day Timed to a Blockbuster Release
Bind & Banter plans to open quietly Tuesday, the same day Sarah J. Maas' A Court of Splintered Harmony is released, according to The Verde Independent.
The bookstore-bar format Hursin is betting on has precedent elsewhere. Bookstore bars can balance cash flow through multiple revenue streams, including books, alcohol, coffee, food and rentals, according to SevenFifty Daily. At The Wild Detectives, the trade publication reports, the business shifts from a coffee-focused operation in the morning to a cocktail bar after 6 p.m., with alcohol sales proving the biggest profit maker, followed by coffee and then books.
How Other Bookstore-Bars Have Grown
Similar hybrids have taken root around the country, including Oxford Exchange in Tampa, Spotty Dog Books & Ales in Hudson and Afterwords Café at Kramerbooks in Washington, D.C. — the same outlet notes that Kramerbooks operated for eight years as a straight bookstore before adding a café and bar that now pours 18 beers on tap. In Arizona, Changing Hands opened its Tempe location in 1974 before later adding a bar at its Phoenix store, where books and gifts still make up about 80% of business against roughly 20% from the bar, though the bar carries better profit margins. Changing Hands co-owner Cindy Dach has said that adding beer and wine made the bookstore a stronger community gathering place.
That kind of blended model also arrives at a moment when independent bookselling nationally has been gaining ground rather than shrinking. About 422 new independent bookstores opened in 2025, a 31% increase from 2024, according to the American Booksellers Association as reported by The Guardian. For Hursin, the bet in Cottonwood is that a bar stocked with bartenders who actually read can turn that momentum into a regular Tuesday-night crowd, not just an opening-day rush.
