The mainstay of mainstreet

Krysta Cowling gives the nickel tour of Moncton’s non-profit La Bikery Co-op, located in the humble ruins of a one-storey building located near the banks of the Petitcodiac River. It doesn’t take long.

There’s the front office, where she — the fit, young, ebullient executive director of the outfit — sits most days at a dilapidated desk within a flashing smile of the main door. There’s the “shop” where co-op members “tool” and “cherry” their bikes alongside volunteer mechanics who actually know what they’re doing. And, well, that’s about it.

It’s an elegantly simple operation for an elegantly simple mode of transportation. “The best way I can describe us,” she says, “is social entrepreneurship. We are a community space and very connected to the core values of our organization.”

Since La Bikery cycled into view in 2012, thanks to the effort of a handful of dedicated board members, the enterprise has pursued seven core objectives that collectively promote sustainable transportation (encouraging the sport as well as the recycling of bicycles and parts).

This company of dedicated perambulators measures its success in a variety ways. Its fees (anywhere from $5 for a lifetime membership to $20 a year for access to the shop, which can be worked off with six hours of volunteer activity) have expanded steadily in every year since its inception, as have the number and size of the government grants and private donations it has received. Adds Cowling: “We also have a rental bike program. Ten are available at any given time to members and non-members alike.”

If the co-operative’s durability seems incongruous in a community that some research shows is the most car-loving urban area in Canada, consider the lessons of entrepreneurial vigour La Bikery teaches each and every day. “The biggest part for us is marketing,” Cowling says. “And, in our case, that means aggressive word-of-mouth promotion. We make extensive use of social media, such as Facebook, because that’s where our main audience is.”

The group’s not shy about contacting more mainstream press outlets either. “For the past month, Kassem Hassan has been a fixture at Moncton’s La Bikery Co-op, putting in volunteer hours towards the cost of bicycles for himself and his seven children,” a prominently displayed piece in the Moncton Times & Transcript reported in May. “Hassan, a Syrian refugee who resettled in Moncton with his family after three years in Jordan, wanted an affordable means of transportation and a way for his children to get out and explore their new home. Bicycles addressed both needs.”

All of which may only prove that fancy office space and high-tech pretentions are no substitute for old-fashioned elbow grease on certain stops along the entrepreneurial avenue.