On the Friday before a home game, Lisa Roberts pointed to the sidewalk traffic out in front of her new store Bed & Butter, on the 300 block of S. Main St., and said: “My other store is only a block away, and it’s more different than I expected. Here it’s all out-of-towners. They’ve heard they should eat at Gratzi or Prickly Pear. They buy their sweatshirts from M-Den.”
Just a block north, at her Rock Paper Scissors gift shop, she says, “it feels so much more local. People eat at the Ravens Club and grab their T-shirts at Elmo’s.” Though she sensibly points out that “a week doesn’t make a case study,” she’s well positioned to start one.
Bed & Butter wasn’t created to serve tourists. It was created, Roberts says, to supply Ann Arbor with “beautiful and functional items for the home, from a spatula to the finest bedding.”
For Roberts, it’s another new ball game. “Both stores had a steep learning curve,” she says. “Over there, we had to learn what letterpress is” (the back portion of RPS deals in custom invitations). “Over here, we have to be able to explain why a dish is forty dollars instead of twenty dollars. Just saying ‘it’s imported’ isn’t good enough. Ann Arbor buyers are educated, and it keeps us on our toes, keeps us buying responsibly.”
Roberts’ taste is bolder and more assertive than many home stores’–not much into ruffles and pastels. Football Saturdays, if she’s working she’ll be glued to the game–her dad is Michigan’s defensive coordinator. She says her favorite part of the new store is “the stock-the-bar area,” which sells a silver mint julep cup and a copper Moscow mule (vodka, ginger beer, and lime cocktail) mug. “They look great as pencil cups too.”
Bed & Butter, 333 S. Main, 436-8905. Sun.-Tues. 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Wed.-Sat. 10 a.m.-9 p.m. shopbedandbutter.com
