The Happy Book Stack is now open in downtown McKenzie

Located at 55 Broadway St., The Happy Book Stack had its soft opening on Monday, June 9.

   “We had a few hundred people on the first day and I expect that to kinda grow as we grow our customer base,” said owner David Jacobs. “So, I feel like it was good. I’m just thankful for everyone showing up.”

   Jacobs said The Happy Stack is also a “full-blown coffee shop” that not only offers popular items such as caramel frappes, white chocolate mochas and caramel macchiatos, but other items such as soups, salads, and sandwiches.

   “We’ll be doing breakfast, lunch and dinner,” Jacobs said. “We’ll do a lot of events such as book clubs and homeschool meetups as well. We’re just hoping to be a good place for the community.”

   “This building is from 1903,” Jacobs said. “It’s got an event room in the back that’s around 900 square feet. We’ve done a lot of work to it, and we’ll keep on doing some more to it.”

   Jacobs also owns the Happy Book Stack in Murfreesboro and is co-owner of The Happy Book Stack in Utah, which also had its grand opening on Monday. In all, he employs around 30 people.

   “I’ve always been someone who buys and sells things,” Jacobs said. “When my wife Priscilla and I got married she was buying and selling clothes. And in the places I started to go to kind of source for that I started stumbling upon people that were selling books.”

   “So, I kind of started selling books online that way. And then, as time went on, I got to where I was getting about ten thousand pounds of books in every single week,” Jacobs said.

   Jacobs said he was pastoring a small church and co-pastoring another small church when the opportunity arose to open his own bookstore via a vacant building that had previously been used for church service.

   “I got my degree in English, and I always liked public-facing businesses,” Jacobs said. “I was doing books online at the time, so everything was warehouse based. I wanted to give it a shot at getting to offer books to the public. So, I just took a chance a few years ago and thankfully it has worked out,” Jacobs said.

   The Happy Book Stack is open from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday.