At the entrance of Bookmans store in Mesa, an array of used CDs, cassette tapes and vinyl records offer music from ’90s pop-punk to new releases.

A little further to the right are magazine racks that contain older issues of women’s and men’s fashion magazines, crafting magazines, comics and more.

And next to the magazine racks is the Southern Avenue and Country Club Drive Bookmans’ newest gem, the recently opened Bookmans café.

This café has everything any homework-stricken, caffeine-deprived, starving college student could ever need, including an array of pastries, sandwiches, and espresso-based drinks.

More than 30 years ago, Bob Schlesinger founded Bookmans Entertainment Exchange in Tucson. Since the company’s formation, five more stores, including two more locations in Tucson and one each in Mesa, Phoenix, and Flagstaff, have been opened.

Over the years, the Mesa Bookmans location, closest of the six to ASU’s main campus, has been a bit ignored by the college crowd.

But Serena Stout, Bookmans café manager, said that in the seven or so weeks that the café has been open, that dynamic is starting to change.

“I’ve never seen this kind of response,” said Stout, who has been working with coffee for 12 years.

She explained that the idea of an in-store café has been in consideration for more than a decade, and was finally created to ensure “a more well-rounded experience” for Bookmans customers.

“It’s for them,” she said.

The new café uses and sells coffee beans purchased through Intelligentsia Coffee and Tea, a company who purchases their beans directly from growers.

Stout said that at the café they are frequently ordering coffee beans from Intelligentsia’s Los Angeles location, and that by the time they arrive at Bookmans they are only three days out of the roaster, therefore still extremely fresh.

With a spacious seating area and multiple floor plug-ins for laptop cords, Bookmans café is an easy place to relax in.

Bookmans is planning to hold a grand reopening of the café sometime in March.

Bookmans café is currently open during regular store hours, 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily, and plans to open a walk-up window at 7 a.m.

Reach the reporter at cebrown4@asu.edu