A pair of Toronto-based friends have teamed up to create their dream cafe, bike shop and community hub. Nearly a year after opening, they’re still on a roll.
Timm Harding and Eric Kamphof, founders of Harbord Village’s Pedaal Coffee + Bikes had been in the bike business long before they ever opened their own shop.
In fact, they first met years ago running a diffent bike shop in the Annex, turning an its at the time approximately $1 million annual revenue in to $6 million during their time there.
“We tried to buy into the company,” Eric tells me, “but they decided, after a long negotiation, they wanted to keep it in the family, and we kind of realized, well, we can’t really compete with that, so we’re gonna leave and start our own story.”
Just how that story actually began, Eric says, was a strike of kismet in itself.
Eric Kamphof and Timm Harding.
The shop, which is located at the corner of Brunswick and Harbord, is actually the former home of Major Treat and Emissions Record Shop which, in Eric’s admittedly “coffee snobby” opinion, had some of the best coffee in the city.
“I used to come here, like, twice a day,” Eric tells me, “and took a year off, did a big bike tour down the West Coast, did some PhD courses […] and we saw that was up for sale. We were like, ‘oh my god, this is perfect.’ We get to replant ourselves in a neighbourhood that we’ve served for, in my case, 20 years.”
Pedaal boasts a proudly maximal design approach.
In a culture where a minimalistic approach is always a safe bet, Timm and Eric tell me that, gaining inspiration from coffee shops in London during a buying trip, they knew right off the bat that the charm and uniqueness of maximalism would be their approach to designing the space.
Upon gaining possession of the property in February of 2024, they embarked on a total redesign and builtout of the space, a large proportion of which Timm did himself.
“Banks don’t want to give too much money straight after COVID,” Timm tells me, “so we thought let’s do as much as we can on our own, which turned into everything we did the floor, we moved to coffee, did the plumbing.”
The results speak for themselves. A checkerboard floor (which, admittedly, Timm says he’d just pay someone to do next time), bubblegum pink coffee bar, floor-to-ceiling bike shelf and a gold moose head mount (who I’m told is named Eugene), all lend themselves to a space that feels decidedly welcoming, fitting in perfectly to the quirky but stylish Harbord Village neighbourhood.
The latte art at Pedaal is truly impressive.
While there’s no arguing that Timm and Eric already had the market cornered when it comes to bike sales and repairs, they didn’t want to open up just another bike shop.
They tell me that they wanted to create the sort of place that even people who’ve never put their feet on a set of pedals before could be drawn to — and nothing speaks to people, especially in Toronto, quite like coffee.
The next challenge they had to surmount, then, was mastering coffee.
Who could turn down a Gouter croissant?
Luckily, they didn’t have to do it on their own, and they found true gems, and certifiable latte artists in their talented baristas, powered by beans from sustainable Canadian roasters like Detour, Traffic Coffee and Anchored Coffee, all of which you can also pick up bags of at the cafe.
A menu of baked goods from Toronto favourite, Gouter, round out their edible offerings.
Brompton, a U.K.-based commuter bike brand, was actually introduced to the Toronto market by Timm and Eric themselves. They’re lightweight, durable and fold up so they can be brought inside of offices and on transit.
“The bicycles that we do are transportation focused, so in this particular industry that we’re in, we’re very, strangely adjacent to most bike stores,” Eric tells me. “A lot are kind of scary to walk into because you’re like, ‘Oh no, it’s gonna be a bunch of bros, and it’s a whole bunch of mountain bikes that are really difficult for anybody who’s new to it to understand what they are and what they do.'”
At Pedaal, Eric says, it’s all about spreading the understanding that biking is “much bigger” than that, and “much more socially relevant.”
“In my past, I sold 100 of them to FedEx, so they’re used for freight logistics,” Eric tells me. “Each cargo bike that they bought was actually out delivering a van by something like 90 per cent more deliveries a day than a van. That’s less time and something like 92 per cent less cost.”
After officially opening their doors less than a year ago, in April of 2024, the shop has already played host to a wave of events, from book launches to Brompton community rides, and even a Halloween event where Bullitt riders decorated their bikes and paraded around the neighbourhood.
“I think this is a tough street to be on,” Eric says. “Unlike Bloor, which is very transactional sort of street, this is a street where you should be part of the neighborhood in order to be here and so we’re lucky that I live in this neighborhood, same with Tim. I’ve worked in this neighbourhood, same with Tim, but we built something here that I think the neighbors were like, ‘this is amazing.’
“And, yeah, we also just, like, really tried to impress them,” he adds.
“The big dream would you have, maybe a store in the East End, maybe the West End, maybe in a different city,” Eric says, winking to his hometown of Vancouver as a potential fit.
In all, though, they really hope to keep spreading the gospel of bikes as a legitimate solution to a number of the transit-related issues plaguing Toronto, as well as plenty of other cities around the world, while upholding Pedaal as a community hub.
“When we first opened, we always said it would be so crazy if someone walked in to grab a coffee and walked out with a bike,” Eric says with a smile. “That’s now happened five times.”
