Speedy Pete’s wasted little time in outgrowing its new building near 27th and Randolph streets.
The electric bike store that opened two years ago on Ideal Grocery’s old spot is moving out, and will double its space in a former bank at 48th and Van Dorn.
Owner Doug Long saw it coming. “It’s always in the back of our minds. We don’t have enough shop space. We don’t have enough warehouse space. And the outdoor space there is something that drove us.â€
The new store, which he hopes to open in mid-March, comes with a parking lot longer than a football field — ample room for his customers to test ride their potential purchases and, Long hopes, to have the same experience he did in 2017.
He and his daughter were biking to Memorial Stadium on a Saturday morning when she got a flat tire. They made it to a bike store, and, while they waited, he took an e-bike for a ride.
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“It was almost an epiphany,†he said. “I thought, ‘People are going to love these.’â€
E-bikes have battery-powered motors that assist with pedaling or, in some cases, throttles that require no pedaling at all. Long wasn’t a hard-core cyclist, but he saw promise in an e-bike’s ability to neutralize the hardships of riding — hills, wind, bad knees, fitter friends.
“I think it’s the freedom, and the ability to go so far. You can explore so much more distance than you can on a normal bike.â€
They’re not new. One of Lincoln’s oldest bike shops sold its first e-bike nearly 15 years ago, a Trek 900.
“And from the start, it had more grin factor to it than anything I’d ever seen,†said Cycle Works owner Kris Sonderup. “It didn’t matter if you were 15 or 60.â€
But most of his buyers are closer to 60, cyclists who want to keep riding but are finding it more difficult.
“These allow you to go ride, and you’re not dog-tired after an hour. Whatever challenge you might have, they allow you to ride.â€
For years, Sonderup’s e-bike sales remained steady but slow — his store typically kept one to two on the sales floor — but they started surging several years ago.
Last Thursday, he had nearly 20 e-bikes ready for sale. “It’s been going up about 50% a year, jumping up and up. We’ve really increased year after year.â€
Speedy Pete’s started small, too.
After Long’s first test ride, he visited other bike shops, researched online and talked to e-bike owners. In 2018, he began selling e-bikes at his four Lincoln QP Ace Hardware stores. And when he built a new store the next year, he dedicated about 1,500 square feet of the building to a standalone e-bike store.
He’d started by selling bikes from just one manufacturer, but now his store stocks models from nearly a dozen makers — with about 70 bikes on the floor. Prices range from about $1,300 to more than $7,000.
That hasn’t deterred buyers, who lately seem to be gravitating toward more aggressive models — mountain bikes and fat bikes.
“The last year selling bikes has been a really good year,†he said.
After Doug and Lisa Long sold their QP stores to Westlake Ace Hardware in late 2020, he started thinking about finding a bigger home for Speedy Pete’s.
He found it at the former Security First Bank. He likes its 3,000 square feet, the big parking lot, the access to the Billy Wolff Trail (and the nearby long hill up the back side of Holmes Lake Dam, which should convince undecided buyers).
But he’s still surprised by how his chance test ride led to all of this. “I didn’t do this with any intention of going into the bike business. The bike business just kind of grew organically.â€