Kingdom Life and Bike, a cafe on the east outskirts of ASU’s Tempe campus, provides more than just pressed coffee and customizable bicycles.
According to a video on its website, Kingdom Life and Bike is a “bike shop, coffee shop, motorcycle shop, apparel shop, lifestyle brand, gear curator, community creator and others." Between all these, the company focuses on one aspect in particular: the community.
Kingdom Life and Bike's founder and co-CEO Andre Abreu originally came to ASU to study design but now studies entrepreneurship at GCU, according to the company's official website. He said the cafe is geared toward bringing people together.
“The point of the company is that we create communities for the high school students (and) college students,” Abreu said. “We were looking for a physical space so we could do just that: talk to people and connect with them.”
Abreu said he’s confident in the business’s success so far.
“The fact that we are doing that... reassures me and the team that we’re doing something good and right,” Abreu said.
According to Abreu, Kingdom Life and Bike started in 2015. He said that since the company's beginnings, its business model has changed immensely.
“At first, it was just me with an online apparel company,” Abreu said. “I knew a lot of designers, and I wanted them and me to creatively open our brains and create cool t-shirts for people.”
JT Clark, who also studied at ASU, is the shop and operations manager. He said the current shop space opened January 2017, around the time when he became involved in Kingdom Life and Bike.
“People (are) my passion, and spending time with people is my thing,” Clark said. “I was really good friends with Andre and had helped a lot with Kingdom, and they they asked me to join the team and be paid to do what I was already doing.”
Clark said the relatively new establishment is hitting the ground running, and the company is working to continue growing.
“This semester has kind of been more of a figure it out as we go kind of thing more so based around the community that developed really quickly at the beginning,” he said.
Clark said he helps build the community by planning events for Kingdom Life and Bike, some of which may seem unusual to others.
“I try to base the events around the attendance of the people that I know will care, for anyone that will walk through the door,” Clark said. “We do alleycat races … We have specific checkpoints and it’s like, get there however you want and get back in one piece.”
Alley cat races are informal, non-sanctioned bike racing events that are facilitated by local communities with varying rules, according to the official website for Big Shot Bikes.
Christina Hashimoto, a freshman studying aerospace engineering, is a regular at Kingdom Life and Bike and said her experience began with a search for transportation across campus.
“I knew I needed to find a bike for transportation and stuff because I don’t have a car,” Hashimoto said. “I was walking down the street and recognized their ‘build your own bike,’ and I thought, ‘Oh, that’s a cool concept.’”
Hashimoto said she likes to visit the shop to do homework, go on bike rides and enjoy the comfortable environment.
“I always joke around like, ‘Hey, I came looking for a bike, and I found a family’, but it’s really true," she said.
Reach the reporter at trevor.hutchins14@gmail.com or follow @TrevorMHutchins on Twitter.
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