Read It and Eat, a new culinary bookstore slated to open in April, will offer cooking demonstrations as well as cookbooks at its Lincoln Park location.

Esther Dairiam, owner of Read It and Eat, 2142 N. Halsted St., said she developed the idea to open a culinary bookstore after traveling to Paris in the fall of 2012.  

“I took a trip to a culinary bookstore in Paris called Librairie Gourmande, and basically they sell all food-themed books, and I thought that was a really neat idea,” Dairiam said. “When I came back, I started to research the idea and think about how I could potentially do it and put my own twist on it.”

Madelaine Bullwinkel, resident chef at Alliance Francaise de Chicago, 810 N. Dearborn St., led Dairiam’s trip to Paris. She also leads groups of five students on a weeklong culinary tour of Paris twice a year. The students stay in the Montmartre neighborhood in Paris and live as if they are French for the duration of the trip. 

“We go to the market, shop and prepare a midday meal in my apartment,” Bullwinkel said. “We also go down to central Paris to cookware stores and, as it happened, we also go to [Librairie Gourmande], which is one of the single largest cookbook stores in Paris.”

After her trip, Dairiam said she came back to Chicago and did some research to see what it would take to open and run a culinary bookstore. 

“I sat on the idea for a little while and then did some more research,” Dairiam said. “Then I talked to a few people and took a few classes on bookstore operations, and finally last year I was able to pull together a business plan and get started.” 

In preparation for opening Read It and Eat, Dairiam took a week-long workshop class with Paz & Associates, a small Florida business consultant with a specialty in book retail. Donna Paz Kaufman, partner at Paz & Associates, said a lot of research about running a small business and learning how to work in the retail and book industries is crucial for success.

“Many people who come to our classes haven’t managed a retail store before or even owned a small business,” Kaufman said. “Many of [our students] are coming from corporate life, so we help them become generalists and learn what they need to do to really assess the opportunity to see whether it’s a good fit for them personally skill-wise and in terms of what the job requires. [We also] help them determine if they have the adequate capital to open up this new business.” 

Kaufman has continued to assist Dairiam with her business plan to assess the opportunities in the space Dairiam’s store provides. Mark, Kaufman’s husband, even came up with the name for the bookstore.

When choosing a location, Dairiam said she had a few neighborhoods in mind, but Lincoln Park met all of her criteria for the bookstore’s location.

“My criteria was [the store location] needed to be in a vibrant neighborhood,” Dairiam said. “[The street needed to have] a lot of foot traffic with interesting and complementary stores surrounding it.”

Bullwinkel said culinary bookstores serve a wide variety of consumers because everyone reads cookbooks for different reasons. 

“Cookbooks themselves have a much bigger field than you might imagine because it encompasses culture, people’s experience, travel, history and when it comes to all things French, you can’t separate France and the idea of what it means to be French from food,” Bullwinkel said. “If you are into food as an armchair reader or somebody who is actively cooking, there’s a book in [Dairiam’s] store for you.”

Dairiam said Read It and Eat is more than just a bookstore and she hopes her customers will see that.

“The bookstore is a destination,” Dairiam said. “It’s about more than just buying a book. It’s about socializing and meeting other people.”