Athens Bike Shop Makes Unique Adjustment to Appease Customers, CDC

With a surplus of free time, Athens residents are participating in more outdoor recreation than ever before. Facing CDC guidelines and intense demand, The Hub moved their operation to the outdoors.

With not a single customer in the store, it may appear that bike shops around Athens took a hit when COVID-19 struck. What you don’t see is that all the customer service now happens outside.

Jim Stradley, manager of local bike shop The Hub, said that after the initial shutdown, his store was protected from closures due to its designation as an essential service. That didn’t mean they could continue to do business as usual, though. To operate in accordance with CDC guidelines, Stradley and his team had to think outside the box; or, more literally, outside the shop.

“We weren’t at that time aware of all the things that could lead to spreading. So we did everything outdoors,” said Stradley. We’ll set up a tent and we’ll have a rack there for folks to park their bikes with a little table for some accessories — it’s just to start conversations.”

While some businesses struggled to make end’s meet during the height of the pandemic, local bike shops are seeing more business than ever. Not only did the free time offered by COVID-19 introduce many people to the outdoors and cycling, but it also allowed seasoned riders more time to get out and practice, including Athens local and professional cyclist Abby Hobbs.

“A lot of people were faced with all this free time because they were working from home, or for us we had spring break then another two weeks more of just no class,” said Hobbs. “In that perspective, I think COVID gave me more time to ride.”

More Athenians on bikes means more customers at the city’s bike shops, and Hobbs certainly isn’t the only one who got out more when COVID-19 struck.

Athens Clarke-County leisure services director Kent Kilpatrick says that new trail counters on the Greenway have documented a dramatic uptick in traffic in the past year.

“Attendance in our parks has really been on the rise,” said Kilpatrick. This past year our Greenway trail system has seen 360,000 visitors.

Because so many Athenians have gained more free time during the pandemic, business is booming for bike shops around town, despite their temporary face lift.

Stradley hopes the trend continues not only for the sake of business, but for the health of the Athens community as well.

“I hope that this trend of evaluating how we’re spending time will continue so people will reorganize some priorities, so that this outdoor lifestyle will stick,” said Stradley. “Which I think only benefits the community.”