Joe Muggs Coffee

Description: A bookstore café located inside a large Books-A-Million offering espresso drinks, brewed coffee, frozen beverages, pastries, and light café snacks with plenty of seating for reading, studying, remote work, or casual conversation. The atmosphere blends a traditional coffee shop with a full retail bookstore experience, making it a popular spot in Lowell for book browsing, quiet work sessions, and relaxed hangouts near Gastonia.

Comments: This is inside Books-A-Million, which is basically a less commercially successful version of Barnes & Nobles. Joe Muggs Coffee is the chain that’s always inside Books-A-Million, just like Starbucks inside of Barnes & Nobles.

There’s nothing remarkable here. If you’ve been to Barnes & Nobles and hung out at their Starbucks, this is that, just different branding. The coffee shop is at the front and has some seating, really the only seating in the whole store. So, it’s shared by coffee drinkers and book readers alike. None of the chairs are comfy, think of those wooden chairs Starbucks uses that work but certainly don’t feel good after an hour or so. There’s a small outdoor patio. It’s alright.

The coffee shop is full-fledged though. All kinds of drinks, smoothies, hot chocolate, tea, so I’d say it’s the highlight of this location. This is a good place to browse books and read a bit on a non-busy day (so like a random weekday).