Today we’d like to introduce you to Whitney Gallegos.
Whitney, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
We opened Poppy Books & Gifts in December of 2022! We had the idea to start a bookstore just earlier that year and made it happen in about five months, which is crazy in hindsight. We first started by finding a place and weren’t able to find one.
The day after we had decided to not go on with this idea, the exact house that we had been wanting in the first place went up for sale. We took that as our sign that we were meant to open this store! Lots of research went into our initial stocking of the store, as well as remodeling the house. We wouldn’t have gotten where we are today without help from so many of our friends and families.
Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
We have had our hiccups along the way, but they have been limited to minor things like realizing the walls of our store were concrete and having to figure out how to secure our shelves to that.
The road has been remarkably smooth, but not always easy! I think we are lucky with how much we have been able to accomplish in the last year and a half.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Poppy Books & Gifts?
Poppy Books is one of the newest independent bookstores in Utah. We sell only new books, which sets us apart from some of the amazing used bookstores in the county! We try to have something for everyone and carry both fiction and a little nonfiction, as well as adult and kid’s books.
The community has been so supportive, and we are so proud of how we have been able to create a space for all book lovers to connect and become friends! We have monthly book clubs, author events and signings, and other fun events throughout the year!
We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you.
We have been lucky with our success. The odds of this dream becoming a reality were slim, even to us in our early stages of planning.
We were lucky to get the exact location we wanted, as well as lucky to have such an amazing response from our community. We have also been lucky with our connections, which have allowed us to host some amazing authors through our store!
Contact Info:
- Website: poppybookssf.com
- Instagram: @poppybookssf
