Iris Books & Coffee preparing to open in Greeneville

GREENEVILLE, Tenn. (WJHL) – A new used book store has been in preparation for the past year, and the owners are finishing up the final touches to prepare for opening day.

“We have been setting up all the coffee equipment and putting in thousands of books into our payment system,” said Americo Rodrigues, co-owner of Iris Books & Coffee. “We haven’t stopped since, I would say May or June of last year.”

Iris Books & Coffee, located at 702 W Main Street, offers over 15,000 books for people to buy–ranging from adult fiction, non-fiction, history, homeschool textbooks and children’s books.

“They can come in, take a look at a book, have a cup of coffee and just gather here,” said Rodrigues. “We’ve gotten a lot of reaching out from Bible study groups, different groups, senior groups, the list is long and I think that’s kind of what we were going for.”

Iris Books & Coffee will be the only used book store in Greeneville.

“There were other stores that are kind of boutique-ish and had books, but weren’t bookstores. We saw a need and we also wanted these kinds of things for our own kids,” said Rodrigues. “These kinds of books, home education books, home schooling books, that sort of thing.”

Rodrigues told News Channel 11 that the store also has a basement, which is currently being used to store the surplus of books that they have to offer, but he hopes they can turn it into a community space at some point in the future.

Iris Books & Coffee will open for the first time on Monday at 10 a.m.

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