Bikes, Coffee and a bunch of great people: Cafe Werkstatt

Just like it is bikes, coffee and a bunch of great people, that’s what Cycle Service with Cafe Werkstatt stands for but in fact it’s much more than that. We have seen different kinds of cafés but one’s that is a workshop as well?

That has a story to it and Ramnathan Nambiar, the 25 year old founder of Cafe Werkstatt is the one who started off this journey.
How did the idea of Cafe Werkstatt come up?

After my degree, you know how it is. Get a job, work, move on, that’s how the society works. So I started off working for decathlon. Cycling had always been a passion of mine and I used to ride for different clubs and races in the past 6–7 years. But from my experiences I felt that what the cycling community faced was a good service center, no one to give them a good proper mechanical service, that’s was the first time it striked and then the idea sparked in my mind on how about a bike mechanic workshop or like you say cycle service?

But you know it isn’t that easy to immediately just start off something. I pitched this to my friend Akhilesh and the next thing we know was he resigned and we started of Cafe Werkstatt just like that!

What’s with the name “Cafe Werkstatt”?

The name Werkstatt is of German origin. Werkstatt means workshop in German. We added cafe along with that because that’s basically the idea. A cafe’s a place where people meet, talk, come together so that’s what we wanted. Not just a workshop but more of like a “hangout” place as well.

How long did it take to set up the business?

So this could be called a post pandemic business. But the idea and execution had already started way before lockdown had happened. I resigned my job so that’s me into the “jobless” status but in fact this actually gave more time to think and plan. So with all that we started off in June 2020 just after the lockdown got lifted in India. Like everybody we too had our own share of problems associated with the field. There was a high increase in demand but at the same time the manufacturer could not meet up with the demand, so there was a lot of shortage of spare parts and cycles.

How do you operate and what’s the process involved?
We don’t basically sell cycles, we customise cycles as per the client’s purpose. So we do touring bikes, single speed ones, race bikes, gravel bikes, all sorts of lifestyle bikes and that’s what we are specialized in and then it’s the maintenance part of the bicycle. Most importantly there’s the bike fit process that’s setting bikes according to our body geometry. It’s not just you take and cycle and just roam around, there’s also a science behind it. Now our team has grown from 2 to 4 so that is me, Akhilesh, Tulaib, and Anees. Akhilesh and Aneez are still in the game, racing. They had been riding in the nationals and Tulaib is a sports psychologist.

We have a team at the same time we also support a junior racing team in Malapurram. We help them with their training and we also take junior riders who wants to race, who wants to participate in road races, we help them and set their training plans, etc. The other part of our store is events. We had conducted tour packages to Wayanad, we been doing local races for the community and we been conducting talk shows inside our store where we invite particular
people from cycling or health field. A lot of stories are shared in these sessions, in fact a lot to learn from – we call it the StattTalk.

How’s the journey so far?
Some of the supply chain problems have been solved. Our plan is to grow the community first. Now our store numbers have also increased. The first one was in Calicut, now we have one in Kottakal as well. The community must grow, only then the business will grow and we plan to bring a lot of changes.
We been working on drivetrain degreasers, for cycling degreasers are quite expensive so we been working in collaboration with another company to develop this at a much better pricing for people.

There’s a lot of youngsters out there who wants to start something of their own. What advice do you have for them?
Hardwork and passion. Start from the beginning itself we understood that this process would not be an easy one. It was easy to create but to run Cafe Werkstatt, that’s what the game is all about. There’s a lot of experimentations going on every day. We connect with the clubs in and out of the state. Most importantly always be updated, that’s how you keep up with the rest of the world.

There’s a “Cafe” in the name. So does it actually run like one?
People have asked why not really make this a cafe. We’ve kept it in the list. Visit our store and you can see that we’ve set it like a vintage home scenario. Customers should feel comfortable just like coming to home and getting their service done, that’s why the “vintage homelike” scenario is preferred.
People come over everyday just for that. There’s also a corner for coffee and to sit. 

People come over to talk about cycling and all that. We try our best to give maximum to the community and that’s what Cafe Werkstatt’s all about right now! 

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