The shop’s updated name, Broomwagon Cooperative Bike Shop, reflects recent changes in the ownership structure of the North Lexington business.
A longtime business and community hub in Lexington’s North Limestone neighborhood has changed its ownership structure as it approaches a decade in operation.
Broomwagon Bikes, located at 800 N. Limestone, has been a staple in the thriving northside community since 2015. However, COVID-19, rising property costs, the temporary closure of its café in late 2023, and changes in the biking industry have led its leadership to reassess how to move the business forward.
This culminated in a July 17 announcement that one of its previous owners, Adam Drye, and two of its employees, Paulina Vazquez and Michael Wright, had taken over the reins, making Broomwagon the city’s first worker-owned cooperative bike shop.
According to Drye, he had been interested in making Broomwagon a co-op from the business’s inception as a way to better compensate its mechanics, whose average pay is significantly lower than that of most other trade jobs. However, it never materialized.
“It’s critical to have that element of ownership and see it as a long-term career rather than a job you only have while you’re in college or working toward something else,” Drye said. “Retaining mechanics is the biggest piece of the puzzle for any bike shop, and getting them better compensation is a critical component of that.”
Helping Broomwagon’s workforce to organize and line up financing along the way was Sam Lockridge from the Patchwork Cooperative Loan Fund, a community wealth fund that helps launch and turn existing businesses into co-ops.
A regular customer inside the shop’s café, which closed late last year, Lockridge had been observing the business and even talking with some of its workers under the radar about forming a co-op when Drye approached him with the same idea.
“[Adam] reached out to me through a mutual friend not knowing I’d already been talking with others about it, which made for a good ‘funny you should ask’ moment,” Lockridge said.
While Drye, Vazquez, and Wright are the only three members of the newly organized worker co-op, there’s a clearly defined path for more people to join the ownership group — a 1,500-hour apprenticeship. Currently, one of Broomwagon’s part-time employees is already on track to complete the required hours in the months ahead.
“It includes professional development meetings along the way to make sure everything is on track,” Drye said of the apprenticeship. “Then, after 1,500 hours of labor, you’re eligible to be an owner, allowing you to share in leadership decisions and in the company’s profits.”
A significant part of those 1,500 hours involves learning the ins and outs of bicycle repair and parts installation, an aspect of the business that has always been a focal point, even more so since the pandemic. This focus stems largely from the inconsistency of bike sales, which tend to happen in intermittent bursts.
“Service has been a much more sustainable revenue stream over the past four years,” Drye said. “Since opening in 2015, we’ve had spikes in new bike sales, but oftentimes when it happens, we’ll buy more inventory only to get stuck sitting on it. That cuts into our sales margins, which weren’t great to begin with. [Bike sales] are a big part of our revenue but only a small part of our profit. Service, on the other hand, is completely different because oftentimes, when you earn a customer, they keep coming back as long as they’re riding bikes.”
“A new bike owner often doesn’t know what they do and don’t need,” Wright added. “They want to buy but don’t always realize what comes with it, whether that’s lights or air pumps or bags or anything they may encounter during their rides. Our goal, above everything else, is to get you set up without making it feel like you’re in a predatory space.”
With that in mind, Broomwagon is going all-in on its personalized approach, both in how it handles bike repairs and service and with its new and repurposed bike sales.
“Our goal is to create a more tailored retail experience and not a model that overwhelms you with options,” Drye said. “For a small shop like us, it makes more sense to take the personalized approach than the one-stop-shop one, especially when you’re competing with mostly online retailers.”