Watch Out Coffee Shops, the Solar-Powered Bike Café Is Coming for You
A solar-powered, siphon-brewing coffee bike sounds like a topic for this week's episode of Portlandia. And if the Swedish Company Wheelys knows what's good for them they should start pitching Fred and Carrie on their mobile café concept right now. Launched last year and already operating in 10 countries, Wheelys just unveiled an upgraded model on IndieGOGO with features like a gas burner, sink, WiFi hotspot and solar-powered charging station.
The bikes are targeted to aspiring entrepreneurs who want to go into business without massive start-up costs—the campaign is offering the original, more basic model for $2,250 and Wheelys 2 for $7,000. Going forward, new buyers who operate under the Wheelys brand will also be asked to pay $150 a month as a licensing fee, but that's being waived for early bird funders.
We'll have to wait and see if the bike-as-coffee-shop concept can really take off across the U.S. (outside of a few urban markets with temperate weather), but the company claims to be the fastest-growing coffee chain in the world. No word yet on how they might deal with Portlandia's barista cabal.
