The residents of Harbord Village saw a seamless transition earlier this year when a beloved café transformed into a retail space perfectly fit for Toronto — a specialized bike shop combined with a third wave coffee shop featuring, of course, Canadian coffee beans and local pastries.
The remaining open location of Major Treat Coffee closed permanently in February. Fortunately, when the real estate listing was posted, a certain Harbord village resident — and self-proclaimed coffee snob — was waiting for just such a vacancy.
“This location happened to be my favourite coffee shop. My partner saw it pop up on Realtor.ca and I think in two weeks we had it signed; we didn’t even have a lawyer, or a real estate agent,” says Eric Kamphof, new co-owner of Pedaal. It’s a new bike shop specializing in folding and cargo bikes that doubles as a third wave coffee shop carrying three varieties of Canadian roasted coffee beans and local vegan and gluten-free pastries. They even hired Major Treat’s previous head barista to manage their coffee program.
It sounds spontaneous, but Kamphof and his business partner Timm Harding have been working in the bike industry nearly their entire lives. The two of them met working at 30-year-old Annex bike shop Curbside Cycle, which spearheaded the import of unique European bike brands, including cargo bikes, to introduce more cycling options to the Canadian market.
They bonded over a shared vision to convince more Canadians to use bicycles for transportation. They knew they were onto something when in 2018, they sold and onboarded numerous Danish-made Bullitt cargo bikes to FedEx, launching North America’s first cyclelogistics fleet for freight transport across Canada. The following year, Kamphof contributed to a research paper published by the Pembina Institute to help onboard companies like FedEx to realize bikes as a solution in the “last mile” (a distance too short to travel by car, but too long to walk).
By the time of their leave from Curbside in June 2023, Kamphof as the shop’s CEO and Harding as director of operations, they had tested every folding bike available on the market and identified London-based Brompton bikes as the leading manufacturer.
“Nothing folds as small, nothing rides as well,” says Kamphof. “It’s the one bike you can own in this city and just bring inside; it doesn’t get stolen.”
Pedaal’s main bicycle offerings (all of which can be taken for a test ride on-site) are the Brompton folding bikes and the Bullit cargo bikes, for which the company is also the Canadian distributor.
“We carry the world’s smallest bike and the world’s biggest bike all in one and nothing in between,” laughs Kamphof. He’s hopeful that in the future they’ll carry regular city bikes and e-bikes from Europe as well.
Pedaal also has an experienced mechanic servicing the shop, Aidan Bryant.
“I always say there’s probably 15 really good mechanics in Toronto at his level,” says Kamphof. Contrary to the perception that a good bike mechanic is also a mean one, Bryant has a reputation for being incredibly friendly and thorough — ensuring that clients know exactly what he plans to fix before he starts the work.
His skill set, backed by a decade of experience, includes fixing regular road bikes, as well as folding and cargo (including the FedEx fleet bikes). You can book a repair appointment with him through the Pedaal website. He hopes to launch a mini repair course in the fall in order to empower customers to execute minor fixes like a flat tire.
The reason Pedaal is also a coffee shop, besides the owners’ love of caffeine and fondness for Harbord Village, is partially math.
“Most bike stores have the worst revenue per square foot in retail, partly because it requires so much storage space,” Kamphof says, adding that it’s not easy to attract new customers off the street.
“A lot of bike shops are not very welcoming spaces for everyone, whereas a coffee shop is,” adds Harding. “We’ve already got a lot of people on bikes that [had just] came in for a coffee. They never would have seen the bikes before.”
Their “high-five moment,” as they describe it, was when a customer walked in to buy a coffee and walked out with a bike for the first time — a price difference that spans between $2,400 and $7,000+. It’s happened twice since they opened three months ago.
In an effort to ensure their coffee business stands alone, and caters to different flavour palettes, Pedaal carries beans from three different Canadian roasteries: Detour out of Hamilton, Anchored Coffee out of Nova Scotia and Traffic out of Quebec, as well as Toronto-based Pluck Tea for non-coffee drinkers.
The pastries come from two different Toronto bakeries: plant-based Bad Attitude, which also carries some gluten free offerings, and Goûter, a French patisserie.
The cafe pays for the business overhead, but Kamphof and Harding are optimistic about the year ahead.
“We really believe in urban transportation, it’s our passion before making money,” says Kamphof. “Our goal is really to be evangelists of the bicycle.”
Their expansion plan includes strategically locating themselves in areas of the city that are lacking in bike shops, which is pretty much everywhere outside of the Annex, he notes. “If you want to buy a Ford, you can go to probably 10 dealerships at different locations throughout the GTA. You should have the same option with bicycles.”
Pedaal is open seven days a week and is located at 168 Brunswick Ave.
