SAN ANTONIO — A local couple is living out their dream of owning a bookstore café. The cool part is it’s on wheels!
Ivan Trevino and his wife Ramita opened Atlas Books Lounge this summer after months and months of planning.
“I love books. I have a whole library at home and I’ve always wanted to own a bookstore. We like to bake and make stuff together so we kind of started throwing ideas together and we kind of formed a little mobile café,“ Ivan said.
Atlas Books Lounge offers hundreds of novels from various genres including fantasy and psychological thrillers. The owners said they plan on expanding to include more variety like children’s books and blind date books.
“It just kind of started from the very bottom with what we had,” Ivan said.
They also offer homemade cold brews, teas and desserts. They first started with only two flavors of coffee: French Vanilla and Dark Chocolate.
Ivan explained that he enjoys “minimal coffee,” something he describes as not very sweet and not overpowering and he wanted to offer that option to his customers.
“I wanted to make a dark coffee that everyone would enjoy so I did my best to cut out the bitterness and not make it too, too sweet. Just a nice refreshing coffee,” Ivan said.
Besides cold brews and teas they also offer refreshers in various flavors like pineapple, mango and guava.
Their overall best-seller is their Tai Tea Cold Brew Mix, which entails a concoction of their tai tea and dark chocolate cold brew.
And you can’t forget about their homemade desserts.
Ivan said their specialty is the Castella Cake, a fluffy Taiwanese dessert that is typically very airy, soft and not overwhelmingly sweet.
One of their newest additions is the Banoffe, a tai-take on a British dessert. It’s layered with Oreos on the bottom, homemade caramel, bananas and whipped cream on top.
“Everything is homemade. The cakes are homemade. Everything’s from scratch,” Ivan said.
Booklovers can also browse their handmade resin products including custom keychains and bookmarks created by May Mades.
Ivan said they will renovate their current truck in the near future but have long-term plans to move to a bigger trailer and eventually into a brick-and-mortar location.
Atlas Books Lounge can be found all over San Antonio but does frequently stay near The Rim and Medical Center.
“So, we kind of go around all of San Antonio, but we’re just sticking close to home for now,” Ivan said.
Atlas Books Lounge posts their location on their Instagram page each week. If you want to find them, click here.
Their latest spot is The Overlook at The Rim.
