A locally owned business turned an exciting new page last week: one of Wausau’s booksellers, the Story Cellar, moved locations to a larger, more visible downtown storefront on Third Street.
Now located directly in the path of Wausau’s bustling downtown foot traffic, the family-run shop transformed a swift 12-day transition into a major business upgrade.
“It’s so much better. It’s bigger by quite a bit,” owner Laura Spaeth said. “We have some amenities that we didn’t have at the old space like air conditioning. The layout of this is better. The old shop, the building was originally apartments. So it was broken up into small rooms.”
Spaeth opened the Story Cellar on Callon Street back on Small Business Saturday in November 2024. The previous building was originally built as apartments, so the shop was made up of several small rooms. The open layout on the Third Street location (next to Faraway Place) is much more welcoming and comfortable for clients, Spaeth said.
“On a busy Saturday it got difficult to get in and out of those rooms, and some people couldn’t even shop certain parts of the store because they couldn’t access them because there were too many people,” she said. “Here, with it being big and open, it’s much more easy for wheelchairs and strollers and walkers and things like that too.”
Despite being in a more open storefront, the Story Cellar still retains a cozy atmosphere. The basement is a dim, warm environment for book club gatherings, craft events, or just a place to read your new book with a glass of wine (yes, the Story Cellar sells wine). The upstairs features handmade bookshelves, crafted by a Marshfield carpenter specially for the shop.
“I wanted to do it right this time. I wanted to do it the way that I wanted to do it,” Spaeth said. “The last time when we opened, from conception to opening, was very fast.”
While Wausau is home to other locally owned bookstores and national retailers, the Story Cellar brings a unique business model to the area. At this point, Spaeth said about 99% of the books for sale in her shop are locally sourced.
“Everything upstairs is used, everything downstairs here is used. We buy used books from our customers,” she said. “We really try to curate a selection of quality books that are still on people’s [to be read] lists. It’s current stuff in good condition.”
The Story Cellar also takes donated books and sells them downstairs in the discount section. Overall, it’s a community-driven relationship that serves both the business and the customers in more ways that one.
“People who aren’t book hoarders or book collectors like to be able to bring in and sell books and then they can turn around and make room on their shelf without just giving their books away,” Spaeth said.
In the future, the Story Cellar will host some local author events for the Central Wisconsin Book Festival in September, as well as a midnight release party for the new “A Court of Thorns and Roses” book in October.
Overall, Spaeth said the new location is a great opportunity to join the growing downtown neighborhood and be a larger part of the community.
“The most exciting thing is everything that everybody’s doing downtown,” Spaeth said. “We’ve got the Night Markets, we’ve got the concerts, we’ve got Chalkfest, all that kind of stuff and the collaboration with other local businesses. Everybody’s been so welcoming. I’m excited to do things with the other neighboring businesses.”
The Story Cellar is located at 416 N. 3rd St., Wausau, and is open 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
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