Bikes and coffee, coffee and bikes: they go together like peas and carrots. In De Pere, Wisconsin—a suburb of Green Bay—the folks at Luna Coffee have put these two passions together in the form of Luna Bike, a veritable coffee bar on wheels, and “an active example of some of the innovative and practical things you can actually do with a bike instead of a car.”
You can take your bike to the coffee shop, or you can make the bike your coffee shop.
As told to Sprudge by Brice Sturmer.
For those who aren’t familiar, will you tell us about your company?
The Luna Bike project is a mobile extension of Luna Coffee and Roastery in De Pere, Wisconsin. Luna is entering it’s 15th year of business as family-owned company. We roast on a manual 12-kilo Probat roaster and pride ourselves on roasting ethically-sourced coffee in small batches to exacting standards. We work very hard to provide our customers with fresh specialty coffee in an area where little is available.
Can you tell us a bit about the new space?
The Luna Bike is our new extension. It’s a multipurpose rig that we use to deliver our in-town wholesale account orders, do outdoor pop-up events, and travel to indoor pop-ups. The whole purpose is to show folks that we care about community and we want to be active in it. We also use it as a platform to promote healthy living and bike culture. The Luna Bike is an active example of some of the innovative and practical things you can actually do with a bike instead of a car.
What’s your approach to coffee?
The Luna Bike focuses mainly on providing a product that customers can purchase confidently and enjoy in the heat of the summer. Our featured product is our house-made cold brew iced coffee. It’s brewed with the Toddy method for 24 hours at room temperature. This delicate process brings out an incredibly smooth and rich flavor profile from our Guatemala Antigua Panchoy coffee. We sell it by the glass or in a take-home glass growler.
Luna Coffee’s approach to roasting is to bring out the coffee’s sweetness. So for some coffees it might be a complex citrusy sweetness, and in others a caramel-like deep sweetness.
Any machines, coffees, special equipment lined up?
Soon we hope to have a tap system on the bike where we will serve our cold brew infused with nitrogen.
What’s your hopeful target opening date/month?
The Luna Bike is already running!
Are you working with craftspeople, architects, and/or creatives that you’d like to mention?
Yes! The Luna Bike is quite the collaboration project. First of all, we have the bike—a cream-colored Linus Mixte 3 that we purchased through a local bike shop that we work with. Then we’ve got the bike trailer. It’s a prototype electronically powered trailer built by a local inventor and entrepreneur named Brian Bartel. He invented a bike trailer that has a force meter in the tongue to register how much force it is taking to pull the trailer. Then the trailer uses a powered hub to provide just enough push to make it feel like you’re not pulling a trailer. With this, you can load as much coffee as you want and not have to consider weight. When the bike brakes, the trailer senses the opposite force and applies resistance to the hub, stopping the heavy trailer from pushing you out into traffic or something.
We’ve also worked with 2 different local craftsmen to fashion the eye-catching wooden bar top and storage box. Lastly, we have been working with Stephen Curtis of Proper Soda to bring some additional refreshing and unique beverages to our customers. We carry the full line of Proper Sodas on the Luna Bike: Hop Soda, Hibiscus Soda, and the newest addition, Coffee Soda.
Photos by Bernard Reznicek.
