Wheel appeal: cycle cafés are taking over London

Relax with the cycling set: enjoy a bite and a beer at Look Mum No Hands!, which even has a workshop for bikes needing repairs
10 April 2012

Anyone without a bicycle in London will probably be feeling a bit left out this summer — and not because we can't justifiably tour the city wearing Lycra.

While those of us stuck in a more pedestrian world are still visiting the same old haunts — stopping at staid Starbucks for a coffee, grabbing lunch at Pret A Manger (failing to move with the two-wheeled times) — cyclists are spinning into a new social scene as cycle cafés open up all over town.

It's as though the cycle-insiders planned it. Look Mum No Hands! (easily the trendiest new venue on Old Street) had barely settled its bike-lock-friendly plant pots on the pavement and tuned the screens to show live cycle racing before high-end cycle-wear brand Rapha opened its pop-up cycle café around the corner on Clerkenwell Road.

"It's great, because people have been making the trip to the City to come and see us both," says Matthew Harper, co-founder of Look Mum No Hands!, whose idea was to create a space that you can take your bike into, have a bite to eat and a coffee or even a beer while you have your bike fixed, or (when it begins this weekend) watch the Tour de France. The café has a workshop at the back, a fully licensed bar, and every kind of bike-securing fixture you can imagine.

Hardly surprising, then, that it has been growing busier with every passing day since its late-April launch.

"People seem to like us. It's got a lot to do with the space and the relaxed atmosphere but we have also worked really hard to make sure the coffee is good and the food nice," says Harper.

"A while ago London wouldn't have been able to support a bike café but now far more people are cycling and getting involved in bikes."

It's for that reason that Michael Spurgeon decided that now was the time to open his juice bar and bike workshop, CycleLab, on Pitfield Street, N1. CycleLab is in its third week of trading in juices and repairs, and also sells custom-build bikes. "We felt that with Boris's cycle superhighways and the new London cycle hire scheme starting this month, there's going to be a big boom in cycling," says Spurgeon. "The fact that so many cafés have cropped up shows it's the right time and I think this city can sustain far more of them."

It's just as well, because Lock 7 on Broadway Market (one of the first cycle cafés in London) will be hoping to hold on to its share of business. And Japanese bike company Tokyobike, which has a temporary store opening at Old Spitalfield's Market next week, is banking on a lasting cycle-café craze. Its permanent site opens at the end of this year with — of course — a café attached. It's time to buy a bike — and a coffee.

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