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BEM | books & more sits at the intersection of Macon Street and Lewis Street in the historic Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood—but it also occupies another kind of crossroads. Every book on its shelves is written by a Black author, and each one ties food to culture, history or identity. When questions arise about the perceived niche nature of the genre, co-owner Gabrielle Davenport offers a simple response: “Why wouldn’t there be a Black food bookstore?”
And she’s right. BEM operates as one of the first Black-owned, food-centric bookstores in the country, officially opening its doors in October. But the venture has been a long time coming for Gabrielle and her sister and co-owner, Danielle Davenport, whose work has long been rooted in uplifting Black voices.
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Quite the creative pair, Gabrielle’s work has centered on supporting Black artists, curating and producing music and dance programming for a range of venues, including Brooklyn’s art and media institution, BRIC. Meanwhile, Danielle’s interest in language and storytelling led her to study literature both academically and in practice; the actor and playwright has appeared in roles on stage and television.
The sisters always toyed with the idea of starting a business, and even briefly ran an Etsy shop. But their shared love of reading, eating and cooking always led them back to the same idea: a bookstore where Blackness and the culinary world could meet. For both sisters, it all traces back to their shared roots in the kitchen.
“The kitchen, whether it was my aunt's house or my mom’s, was such a center of incredible gatherings around food. The flavors and the stories were inseparable from one another,” says Danielle. And as conversations between the two naturally flowed from food to the recent literature they were reading, the store, according to Gabrielle, “felt like a natural extension of our relationship.”
Timing, however, was an issue. The pandemic struck just as the two solidified their business plan and vision for a physical bookstore, so they moved their enterprise online. BEM launched as a digital shop in the summer of 2021.
The name is a riff on their grandmother's initials and a nod to the culture, traditions and impact that Black people have had on the culinary scene. Six months into launching the website—on the heels of the Black Lives Matter movement—the sisters began popping up at local Black-owned businesses, including BedVyne and Brew and Ode to Babel, plus various institutions across NYC, such as Museum of Food and Drink (MOFAD) and BRIC.
“The role and presence of Black folks within the publishing industry, the food publishing industry and our food culture more broadly as Americans was being re-evaluated and recognized in a greater and more comprehensive way,” says Danielle.
This only fueled the sisters' need to find a physical place to call home. Securing funding via Kickstarter—raising $75,000 in just 32 days—the two scouted spots all across the city. Four years after the initial launch, the sisters found a spot in their neighborhood of Bed-Stuy, on the corner of 373 Lewis Avenue. “Having a space that is not just a Black-owned business but is one that is stewarding our collective legacies is something that we are excited to contribute to,” says Danielle.
The shelves at BEM bloom with cookbooks—many by James Beard Award winners, such as Toni Tipton Martin and Paola Velez—and memoirs from culinary historians, including Jessica B. Harris. The expansive collection of food-related tomes features over 1500 titles that span poetry, fiction, nonfiction and children's books. There are books about the Black Panther Party’s free breakfast program and Driving the Green Book by Alvin Ward, which revisits the legendary The Negro Motorist Green Book, a 1936 guidebook for African-American roadtrippers.
"Part of the premise for us is that food touches everything," says Danielle. "Food is politics, food is climate, food is everything," says Danielle of using food as the foundation for curation.
Beyond the shop, BEM hosts diverse programming in its backbar and kitchen, from conversations with Emmy Award-winning chef Kardea Brown to cooking demos by James Beard Award-winning culinary historian Michael Twitty. It also operates a café, churning out coffees, cappuccinos and espressos with beer and wine on the way. With more cooking classes, dinners and film screenings on the horizon, the sisters hope that their little corner of Bed-Stuy can be a home base for Black stories across the diaspora.
“This really is going to be a living, breathing kind of organism," says Danielle. "We're excited to have folks on the journey with us as it continues to grow."