Church Street Coffee owner releases book on shopping local

Carrie Rollwagon has participated in Shop Small Saturday the day after Black Friday for the past three years through Church Street Coffee and Books, but his year she taken that commitment a step further with her new book. 

In The Localist: Think Independent, Buy Local and Reclaim the American Dream, Rollwagon writes about her year of buying only from Alabama-owned stores and writing about it on her blog, as well as opening Church Street Coffee and Books in Crestline.

Through the experience she learned to save money, discover how to connect with her community, and learn to love indie business more than the big box stores she’d bought from all her life. 

In her journey Rollwagon embraces slow food, small business, the locavore movement, and many quirky indie shopkeepers and unique independent shops. 

Part memoir, part manual on how to shop local, Rollwagon doesn’t attack all big business, but rather writes about what we create with our shopping dollars and unveils new ways of making positive impact on our communities with our spending. She also looks at how to keep the scales balanced between Main Street and Corporate America.

In addition to co-owning Church Street with Cal Morris, Rollwagen is a copywriter and has previously worked The Birmingham Post-Herald and Southern Progress, where she was a copywriter and social media editor. The Localist is her first book.

The Localist is available at Church Street, as well as online retailers, for $20, or from ebook distributors for $3.99. Rollwagen is holding a book signing on Small Business Saturday, Saturday, Nov. 29 at 10 a.m. at Church Street Coffee and Books.