Author Archives: papillionbusinesses

About papillionbusinesses

PapillionBusinesses.com is a project of Little Mountain Web Design. It is dedicated to telling the events and stories of Papillion, Nebraska. We cover topics primarily of interest to the Papillion area and its businesses. To help businesses reach the local Papillion area, we have different types of advertising available. This includes page, banner and icon advertising. All of this geared to reaching the Papillion market in Nebraska. Please contact us to pitch a store, ask questions. and for details at info@papillionbusinesses.com to learn more about reaching the Papillion market.

Papillion Interview: Jaimie Geoffroy, Regional Cafe Operations Manager

Papillionbusinesses.com Interview with Jaimie Geoffroy

Jaime Geoffroy, Regional Cafe Operations Manager, sits at table in the cafe

Papillionbusinesses.com here with.

Jamie Geoffroy, Regional Cafe Operations Manager with Barnes & Noble.

We’re here at the new Papillion location and in the beautiful café. Tell us a little bit about your journey to your position now and then opening up here in Papillion.

Yes. So I’ve been with the company… it’s going on 20 years. Did everything from cafe manager, assistant manager, to store manager. Previous to Barnes and Noble, I ran Arby’s for 11 years and now I’ve been in the regional café operations manager position for over five years. Papillion’s one of our newest stores that will actually be open…70 in the year 2025. So yeah, we have quite a year ahead of us.

I couldn’t help but notice the huge, huge lines coming in, so I don’t have any doubt personally, and then seeing the line to confirm it that this is a fantastic location. We needed something like this here. Bookstores and the cafés are not just bookstores and cafés, they’re really community gatherings.

Yes, absolutely.

Please tell us a little bit more about the café.

Yes. Books and coffee go hand in hand. No matter where you find a bookstore, you’re going to find a coffee shop right near there. Barnes & Noble, back in I think it was the ’90s, created these cafés just to have the community come in and have a place where they could drink coffee, look at a book, and see if they want to purchase it. And like you said, it’s a great gathering place for our communities. And Papillion customers out there… there was over 100 out there. That’s the way the new stores have been opening—with hundreds of people standing in line outside because they’ve been looking for something like this: a community gathering place. And Barnes and Noble is just…we’re very unique now. We cater to the localization of the community rather than a big corporation.

That’s a really good strategy, I feel, because then you’re connected to the community and the community is connected to you.

Yes.

Any favorite items in the café?

Yes, I’m a huge fan of an iced caramel macchiato, vente size, with an extra shot of espresso to give me a real kick for the day. And then we have our brown sugar shaken espresso, which is actually a fan favorite. Starbucks created that about five or six years ago, and they kept it as a core item.

Anything you’d like people to know that maybe they don’t know about the café or Barnes & Noble or…

Yeah, you can use your Barnes & Noble membership over in the cafe. We have some of the best food. You know, a lot of people will compare us to Starbucks. We serve Starbucks product, but we have unbelievable cookies… the best cookies ever. We have great sandwiches. We have pretzels that are stuffed, and we just have a huge variety that pair well with different drinks that our baristas can suggest.

Why Barnes & Noble?

Right. So I love everything about Barnes & Noble. It’s the customers; it’s the booksellers. There’s nothing like it out there. There’s no retail place out there that can give you, where a customer could sit in our café all day and spend their entire breakfast, lunch, and dinner there. You can’t do that at any other retail store. We hear people’s lives, and we become family with them. So it’s just a wonderful place to be a part of.

Thank you.

Barnes & Noble
7949 Towne Center Pkwy,
Papillion, NE 68046
(Previously was Best Buy and is next to PetSmart)

Papillion Interview: Rob Herpel, Store Manager of Barnes and Noble

Papillionbusinesses.com Interview with Rob Herpel

Rob Herpel stands infront of the New & Noteworthy section near the entrance of Barnes & Noble in Papillion

Papillionbusinesses.com here at Barnes and Noble in Papillion with…

I am Rob Herpel, the store manager.

We’ve been very excited for you to come here. Please tell us a little bit about your personal journey here and then the store’s journey here.

Well, my personal journey, I’ve been with Barnes and Noble for about 27 years. I was in Lincoln, and then I’ve been back up here at the Oakview store as kind of a waiting list store for almost the last year and a half. We’ve had some delays, of course, that type of stuff, but  our team has been able to get in here, finally, about two weeks ago and are very excited to show off the store. A lot of hard work has been put in, and it’s been a journey of many booksellers from across the Midwest helping us out, from all the way to Kansas City to Sioux Falls. So we’re definitely excited to be here and to show off the store.

It’s beautiful just coming in here, with the displays and all the colorful books that make you really intrigued as to what stories or facts they tell. And there’s just really nothing like a book.

The books here are kind of the backbone of learning and education and entertainment and like I was saying, there’s always more information in detail.

Do you know why they picked Papillion?

The location. There hasn’t been a bookstore out in this area for quite some time. We lost stores in this area due to the Crossroads Mall having a change of plans during the COVID days, so this location became available and was definitely something that was of interest to Barnes & Noble, which is on a growth pattern currently. We wanted to definitely put more stores back into this area of Nebraska and the Omaha area.

What would you like people to know about this store and come and explore?

About this store… it’s a new concept type of store. When you walk in, it’s going to be different from when you’ve walked into in the Oakview store or any of our stores we’ve had for many years. Much brighter, much lighter displays. We have a lot more gift focus, and we have a wonderful café, so it’s a store that has all the different parts of what customers expect from Barnes & Noble, and hopefully they will get that from this store.

Thank you.

Sure.

Barnes & Noble
7949 Towne Center Pkwy,
Papillion, NE 68046
(Previously was Best Buy and is next to PetSmart)

Papillion New Business: Barnes and Noble Grand Opening and Ribbon Cutting

A big welcome and congratulations to Barnes and Noble for their grand opening and ribbon cutting at Shadow Lake Towne Center in Papillion!

Inside the store:

Beautiful and colorful arrangment of books and flowers greet you, as you enter the bookstore

Cafe and children’s section meet at an angle with a sign with special offer to Premium Members for a free hot or iced coffe or tea for the grand opening special

Patrons wait in line at register of the cafe

Seating areas for the cafe

First glimpse of the cafe and the seating as you enter from the right of the store

Outside the store, over a hundred excited future patrons eagerly await Barnes and Noble’s Grand Opening in Papillion:

People lined up around and past the store, so eager to finally have the bookstore and cafe!

The ribbon cutting:

Store Manager, Rob Herbel, makes opening comments before the ribbon cutting outside the bookstore. Local author Lynn Painter carries the scissors to the ribbon outstreched in front of the door.

Lynn Painter opens the scissors to cut ribbon

Lynn Painter begins to cut the ribbon

 

Ribbon is cut and falls while people applaud

Barnes & Noble
7949 Towne Center Pkwy,
Papillion, NE 68046
(Previously was Best Buy and is next to PetSmart)

Please come back later for our Papillion interviews with Rob Herpel (Store Manager) and Jaimie Geoffroy (Regional Cafe Operations Manager).