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Glass half full: Gavin Hudson, centre, and the Butternut Bikes team began life in a furloughed pub
A pop-up cycle repair business that began life in a furloughed pub has moved to a permanent new home after being inundated with customers.
Butternut Bikes says it was hit by a “whirlwind” of demand from north Londoners desperate to get their bikes road-worthy as the lockdown eases but public transport has to be avoided.
Its shop in Crouch End is round the corner from the Railway Tavern pub, where it began life while the pub was forced to close as a result of lockdown.
The new shop in Crouch Hill
Co-founder Gavin Hudson told me last week: “We have just got the keys to the shop and it’s all systems go. It’s kind of crazy.
“We’ve been in the pub for three weeks and it became increasingly busy. We fixed a lot of bikes. What we love doing is fixing bikes and making people happy. It’s been a whirlwind. I bought a 50-page invoice book and went through it in a week.
“Our focus has been to make the best out of a bad situation [with coronavirus] and help people to get around.
“In some ways I’m almost feeling guilty to have done well out of this, but our focus is on helping people rather than making ourselves some money. The bike industry has never been the way to make a fast buck.”
Mr Hudson, 39, used to work in Velorution bike shop in Islington. Business partner Tullen Dawson used to work at Brompton bikes.
They quit their jobs to focus on repairing rather than selling bikes and recruited a 17-year-old who has been unable to go to school during lockdown.
At first, Mr Hudson joined a “mutual aid” group that would carry out repairs at people’s homes. A church then allowed the group to do bike repairs in its car park, but it became “busier and busier”.
Then the landlord of the Railway Tavern, in Crouch End Hill, offered the use of his pub as a pop-up bike repair shop.
The area’s only bike shop, Evans, had shut down last year. Customer demand is expected to increase further when the Government scheme offering half a million £50 vouchers for bike repairs is launched this summer.
Having your cake: first-day treats at the new shop
The new shop, in Crouch Hill, will focus initially on repairs. “If there were bikes to sell, I would sell them,” Mr Hudson said. “We get a lot of inquiries about bikes. But there just isn’t the availability of new or second-hand bikes anywhere, particularly of women’s bikes.
“We are fixing a lot of bikes that are coming out of garden sheds covered in cobwebs. We’re fixing about 10 bikes a day, and I have turned away five or six already today. That is with no advertising whatsoever. The spirit in the community has been amazing. People are so thankful to have a bike shop.
“At the start [of the pandemic], it was people who wanted to use their bike for exercise. As lockdown moved into the second phase, more and more people began to prepare to go back to work by bike. They’re preparing to use public transport as little as possible.”
rosslydall 