HOST INTRO: Chapel Hill and Carrboro have long been home to a diverse array of coffee shops, but a new one has recently joined the fold. Epilogue Books Chocolate Brews opened in early November, and many residents have been eager to check it out.
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LOVEN1: Epilogue is a unique place. People walking down Franklin Street can see through its glass storefront large tables where students spread out their textbooks to study. They’re greeted by the aroma of churros as they open the door. A wall of books stretches deep down to the back of the store where tree branches break the rigid symmetry. Hand-written signs beckon visitors to take a blind date with mystery books wrapped in brown paper and string.
LOVEN2: Nav Ekezue checked out Epilogue soon after it opened to see what it had to offer. She works at Perennial, another coffee shop on Franklin Street, but she doesn’t feel like Epilogue is bad for her employer’s business.
EKEZUE1 [8s]: The way that it works, it's not necessarily like each coffee shop is in competition with each other. They all fill a very specific niche.
EKEZUE2 [10s]: Epilogue fills a really cool niche in all this because it offers more of a study space. Like, out of all the coffee shops, it has the most indoor seating.
LOVEN3: She said each coffee shop has its own specialties. Perennial has little room for studying and offers Italian coffee that’s deliberately not too sweet. Carolina Coffee Shop operates more like a restaurant. Epilogue has thousands of books, which no other shop has.
EKEZUE3 [27s]: I personally like the aspect of books and combining that with coffee and pastries. I also like they have a very cultural slant with being a Spanish focused bookstore. But overall, I think that what I really like about Epilogue is the fact that they have a lot of space and their atmosphere is very homey. So it's a good place to sit down and study or just, you know, take a break from the hustle and bustle of being a student at Chapel Hill.
LOVEN4: Reynaldo Reyes-Arroyo, a UNC student, has never worked at a coffee shop, but he agrees with Nav’s opinions of Epilogue.
REYES1 [6s]: I think that a lot of the student population especially would enjoy it. It seems like a pretty relaxing place to study.
LOVEN5: He was convinced to try out Epilogue by the books more than the coffee.
REYES2 [17s]: I'm actually not really a fan of coffee. I just kind of go to coffee shops for the aesthetic. But I actually really like going to bookstores so like, walking in there, I was like, “wow,” it's like I finally found a coffee shop that I can like, be in for things other than the aesthetics.
REYES3 [10s]: I didn’t expect like a very good selection of books, but surprisingly like they had a lot of books there that I've actually just never seen before.
LOVEN6: For bookworms, Epilogue fills a hole that has plagued the local literary community for several years. When the Bookshop, with its iconic cat-filled windowsills, closed in the summer of 2017, it left Franklin Street devoid of any independent book stores for the first time in decades. Epilogue fulfills this role and offers students an alternative to large corporations like Barnes and Noble, which replaced the Bull’s Head Bookshop at UNC in 2015.
LOVEN7: However, not everyone comes to Epilogue for their selection of books. Claire Hefner is a UNC student who regularly walked past Epilogue when it was still under construction. After visiting for the first time, she isn’t convinced that the books are its greatest strength.
HEFNER3 [5s]: Epilogue has the books, which is really cute. But I don't really see myself buying any of the books.
LOVEN8: She thinks its greatest strength is its excellent location on East Franklin Street. It’s one of the closest coffee shops to UNC’s campus, making it easily accessible to students getting there on foot.
HEFNER4 [14s]: I think that there’s a lot of like coziness that Epilogue has to offer, and it’s directly on Franklin, which is nice, versus Gray Squirrel and Open Eye Cafe, which are pretty far from Franklin Street, or like further down in the Carrboro area.
LOVEN9: Nav agrees that Epilogue is much more accessible than where she works or other coffee shops, but she thinks what really sets Epilogue apart from the others is that they make all of their pastries in house.
EKEZUE4 [7s]: I think their strongest suit is their pastries. They make really good pastries.
EKEZUE5 [7s]: I think that is definitely going to be a huge draw for Epilogue and a really awesome thing that they're offering to the community.