Please help us buy a box. Its a really cool box.

Tell me about the box.

So it’s a box. Like a really big box. A brilliant local artist paints the box. Inside the box you have all the pieces to build a little Parisian café that can be set up each morning and put away each night. It’s also a bodega. Maybe a cat sometimes.

Umbrellas. Little tables and chairs facing the Cultural Trail. Our little terrace oasis between the 700 and 800 blocks of Mass Ave. String lights. Music you control. A little grassy area where you can lay out a blanket and look down the Ave at the downtown Indy skyline.

We serve food from the BB&B Bread Truck - but way more cool stuff than what we have been able to serve the last five years. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, late night. Rain or shine. Winter treats when it gets chilly out. The way we always wanted to do it, but were constrained by our nomadic reality. When the Bread Truck is booked elsewhere or when things get busy, we welcome guest food trucks who share our vision.

What do we do with the box when the café is set up and hoppin’? We turn it into a bodega that features local products, art, books, services, and treats. The rest is carefully curated and well lit - as one must expect when inside a big box.

A beverage program? Oh yes. I spent the last five years putting my sommelier diploma to good use and has put together quite a list of non-alcoholic cocktails, beers, wines, and spirits. Indy needs more sober-friendly spaces and drink menus, and the box will do its best to help fill that space. Maybe we will seek permits for bar trailers on certain special occasions, but the box will always be NA drinks first, booze drinks second. You can also BYOB. Just like we used to do on a Friday afternoon on the banks of the Seine.

Speaking of spaces, this will be a space to connect. COVID really did a number on us and our mental health - definitely mine. We happen to live in the biggest small town in America, but so many of us are still lonely. The world has taken a turn, and many of us don’t feel safe out in the wild anymore. The box will be a safe space. As our new Superman says, ‘Kindness is the new Punk Rock.’ This will be a space born from love - the love a father for his child, his love for his hometown, his love of food and art and music and people and adventure.

This box will be an adventure. It will be a haven and a meeting place - an HQ for misfits, weirdos, and curious passersby. It will be a vehicle for change and learning and inquiry. It will be a spot where somebody can bust out a violin or set up a turntable and give the world a performance. Its where you might fall in love with your soulmate, or maybe just a corndog. It will be a spot where we can celebrate each other’s wanderlust and plan new adventures together. It’s our space - whoever ‘we’ are and whoever we become. It’s a vision for a better Indy, in a box.

It’s replicable. We can put future boxes pretty much anywhere. We can move the boxes around to where they are needed the most. These boxes respect existing Indy code for sheds and temporary structures on private property. We just need about 800-900 square feet in a parking lot or a field or your backyard.

One box costs about $10,000 - all in. Food truck not included.

For a myriad of reasons, we can’t fund this alone. I know it’s a big ask (especially with some outstanding Kickstarter rewards still out there), but we could really use your help raising the money to make this project a reality. Many of you have already reached out and offered to help do just that - assuaging a great deal of anxiety I have about asking you for your for help, yet again.

BB&B has always been a love letter to Indy. Hundreds of Indy folks helped purchase the Bread Truck at the height of a global pandemic, five very long years ago. The world has changed, and we must change with it. The next evolution of Books Bourbon & Bacon is a box.

The BB&B Box.

Please consider helping make it (and future boxes) a reality with a donation. We’ll put your name on the box, and we will use your financial support to create something truly special and unique in Indianapolis.

Thank you. As always.

AJ Feeney-Ruiz & the BB&B Team

The BB&B Box will feature original work by local mural artist Holly Sims @hollysimspainting.