Own your niche
Kitchen Arts and Letters is a bookshop for all things food
Local business
Kitchen Arts and Letters is a bookshop for all things food
Niche local businesses can out-compete big businesses. Success of Kitchen Arts and Letters is the living proof. Its founder Nach Waxman studied Hindi to help customers. He died last week.
Nach Waxman founded the bookshop Kitchen Arts and Letters in 1983. Earlier he worked as an editor in publishing houses for twenty years. His bookshop was a go-to source for chefs, restaurant owners, caterers, cooking teachers, food writers and editors. One can find book son culinary history and customs, recipes, the microbiology of cheese manufacturing, the role of gastronomy, kitchen antiques, contemporary agriculture, biotechnology. He was famous for helping his patrons with recommendations for the specific books, searching out-of-print editions and discussing authors.
In his interview to New York Times, he said, “Just sitting and selling books is boring,” he said. “It’s making change and putting books in bags. What’s fun is helping people solve their problems.”
Local businesses can learn two things. One, don’t aim to be adored by customers. Just become useful. Two, learn to spot what do the customers want, without thwarting them or disagreeing with them. Three, really good cooking is not cooking by numbers, it’s how well you understand the ingredients. Third one is for the cooks amongst us. RIP Mr. Waxman.
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