By Lauren McLuckie
In a city where cars often seem like the only transportation option, a local café owner is on a mission to show Londoners there is an alternative. For Andrew McClenaghan, the owner of the London Bicycle Café, biking is more than a hobby; it’s a practical and sustainable method of transportation that he believes could change how people travel.
While he now spends most of his days surrounded by bikes, Andrew hasn’t always been interested in biking. Until a few years ago, he was a tech entrepreneur running London-based Digital Echidna, a web agency he founded after graduating from the University of Waterloo in 2002. In 2020, looking for a change of pace, Andrew sold his company and began thinking about his next passion.
“I’ve always been passionate about the environment and climate change,” he says, “so I thought I would change my own habits.”
That desire led him to the London Bicycle Café, where he discovered the potential of e-bikes. He quickly became a regular customer, and soon after, an investor. When the café’s founder moved to British Columbia, Andrew took over as owner at the beginning of 2024. As his involvement with the café grew, so too did his enthusiasm for biking.
“Bikes are the future because they just make sense,” Andrew says. For him, biking is about more than just exercise or helping the environment, it’s about efficiency. While most people see bikes as strictly for exercise, he sees them as the perfect tool for many daily tasks, like taking your kids to school or grocery shopping. With a bike, he explains that you can reach your destination faster, while also avoiding the many irritations of car travel, like traffic and parking. For him, any errand can be done with the right bike.
The enthusiasm is clear in Andrew’s voice as he explains that since e-bikes and pedal-assist bikes reduce the physical demands of biking, meaning anyone can ride one, they can be the “right tool” for any job.
This belief in finding the “right tool for the job” is at the heart of the café’s recent “Bikes for Business” program, a pilot project that allows local organizations to explore the potentials of e-bike transportation. He explained that with this program, the goal is to change local businesses by showing them an alternative to carbon-based transportation methods.
At the same time, Andrew believes that if he “can change the businesses here, that makes things better for my family and my community,” showcasing his dedication not only to the environment, but also to his community.
With this project, Andrew wants to change how local businesses operate by making them not only environmentally sustainable, but also economically sustainable. As he explains, economic sustainability often gets overlooked, but it’s equally important since without it, environmental sustainability is unachievable.
The response to the project has been overwhelmingly positive according to both Andrew and the participating organizations.
For Meals on Wheels, Andrew explains that the program has not only helped reduced costs, but has also made volunteering more accessible, since e-bikes don’t require a car or a driver’s license.
Chad Callander, Executive Director of Meals on Wheels, adds that the program “has given us hands-on experience with an alternative way to deliver services, and we hope to implement it more fully in the future.”
Similarly, Allison DeBlaire, Executive Director of 519Pursuit, an organization that supports individuals experiencing homelessness, applauded the program saying it “has given us opportunity to support individuals in places less travelled by vehicles and other supportive services.”
Beyond running the café, Andrew is committed to advocating for better bike infrastructure in London. He explains that one of the biggest obstacles cyclists face is a lack of safe infrastructure. However, change requires conversations, and Andrew sees the bicycle café is the perfect place for these conversations to begin. “It’s the place to find like-minded individuals that are looking to change things up because it’s so hyper-local,” he says.
At the same time, he knows the café is about more than just bikes or coffee, it’s about building community. Here, people from both within and outside of the bike community can come together and exchange ideas. Andrew loves facilitating these “collisions,” seeing them as sparks for change and perspective shifts. “It could be seeing someone who looks like you roll up on a bike and having that ‘aha moment’ that this is doable,” he says, or hearing someone “talk about some topic that you hadn’t considered before.”
Andrew also loves to give back to the youngest members of the community. Partnering with his children’s school, Mountsfield Public School, he has participated in the the “Ride to Thrive” and “Bike Bus” programs, which teach kids how to ride a bike and encourage them to ride to school together. His pride in the programs and their participants is evident when he says, “these kids are incredibly brave and it’s very inspirational that they’re just so willing to do this.”
Andrew credits young riders as his greatest inspiration saying, “they don’t think the way adults do, and they haven’t been influenced in all these ways yet, which I find really inspirational.”
Ultimately, Andrew says children are at the heart of everything he does as he works to leave behind a better world for the next generation both through his work at the café and in the community.
Looking back on his transition from tech entrepreneur to bicycle café owner, it’s clear that Andrew cares deeply about this city and giving back to his community. As part of this, he’s determined to make London more sustainable so that his kids and the next generation inherit a better world.
Each bike he sells is a small step toward that goal, and seeing them out in the community reminds him that he’s making a difference, one bike and conversation at a time.