In the early months of motherhood, Amanda Badeau found herself wandering the aisles of the Mount Pleasant Target, searching for a place to breathe. “Books are my therapy,” she says. “But even when I carved out time to read, I felt like I was always needed when I was home, even if I wasn’t.” In that liminal, sleep-deprived space between diapers and dawn, her childhood dream of owning a bookstore crystallized into a sanctuary for solitude and story—a third place outside of home and work that fuses books, coffee, and wine: The Archive.
Badeau spent 15 years in corporate operations, working across industries such as Dylan’s Candy Bar, large importing and manufacturing firms, Amazon distributors, and, most recently, a financial technology company. “My expertise was in building and scaling the businesses of others,” she says.
Just before the pandemic, the New York native and her husband relocated to Mount Pleasant, drawn by warmer weather, a change of pace, and the promise of a better quality of life as they prepared to start a family…