Bikeway Coffee Juice Bar looking for new tenants
Bikeway Coffee Juice Bar looking for new tenants
I was disappointed to see a lease sign on the Bikeway Coffee Juice Bar today. Unfortunately, the business never really did flourish. If I were a new business owner, what would I do differently?
- Open early in the morning to tap into people commuting to work. Close early afternoon. Make sure your opening and closing times are clearly stated and you keep to them. Several times we rode by around 7am in the morning looking to stop for a coffee and Bikeway Coffee Juice Bar was not yet open!
- Offer a reusable travel mug that fits in a cycle bottle cage — cyclists can grab a coffee and keep on riding!
- Tap into the cycling market — offer some incentives for ride groups to start and finish their rides there.
- As part of the new lease, get Brisbane City Council to construct some sound barriers between the roadway and the café. It actually was not very pleasant sitting there with peak hour traffic only metres away.
- Provide some shade in summer — even early morning, if someone has just finished a 40 km ride, they will be looking for some shade.
- Combine the juice and coffee bar into one booth (they used to be separate booths, meaning both had to be staffed). This will cut your staffing costs, but also allow the other booth to be used for other purposes.
- Use the spare booth to offer bicycle servicing and tube/tyre/spare part sales — people can drop their bike there on the way to the CBD and pick it up on the way home. Offer loan bikes so that people can complete their ride into the CBD.
- Employ a great barista! The coffee wasn’t bad, but cyclists are highly mobile so will ride to the café that serves the best coffee, has the best atmosphere, etc.
- Get some cycling memorabilia and hang it around the place — cyclists love to look at other bikes.
Whoever takes up the new lease, I wish you well. I love to support facilities that support cyclists.