If you’ve ever wondered why we’re called Bicycle Coffee, the answer is pretty simple: bicycles have been part of how we get our coffee into the community from the beginning.
And yes, we still deliver coffee by bike.
Recently, we followed John on one of his Bicycle Coffee delivery routes through the East Bay. While he biked from stop to stop with coffee in tow, it gave us a chance to see what happens after our coffee leaves the roastery and how many local cafes, markets, and businesses become part of its journey.
From Oakland to the East Bay, One Delivery at a Time
Our day started at Jack London Square in Oakland, where John loaded up his bike and took the Water Shuttle to Alameda. From there, the route took us through Alameda, Emeryville, and Berkeley, delivering and restocking Bicycle Coffee at local cafes and markets along the way.
We stopped at places like Lazy Bird, The Marketplace, Berkeley Bowl, Cayla’s Corner, and Monterey Market, all local wholesale partners that serve or carry Bicycle Coffee. It’s always special seeing our coffee outside of our own cafe, whether it’s being brewed into someone’s morning latte or sitting on the shelf of a neighborhood market. Our wholesale partners help bring Bicycle Coffee into different communities throughout the East Bay, and delivering directly to them keeps us connected to the businesses serving those communities.
But bicycles are more than just a way for us to deliver coffee. They’re part of what we believe in.
That’s why we’re proud to support Bike East Bay, a local nonprofit working to make biking safer and more accessible throughout the East Bay. Their work includes advocating for better bicycle infrastructure, organizing community rides and workshops, and helping create safer streets for people who choose to get around on two wheels. As a business that still delivers by bike, supporting safer cycling in our own community is especially important to us.
Our support also goes beyond the Bay Area. We help fund the work of World Bicycle Relief, an organization that provides durable bicycles to communities where distance can make getting to school, work, markets, and healthcare a challenge. Their work demonstrates something we’ve believed in from the beginning: a bicycle can be a simple tool with an enormous impact.
For us, the bicycle in Bicycle Coffee has never just been a logo. It represents community, accessibility, sustainability, and a practical way of moving people and coffee forward.
Why Does Bicycle Coffee Still Deliver by Bike?
For us, delivering coffee by bicycle isn't just about our name.
It represents something bigger about the kind of coffee company we want to be.
We are an Oakland coffee roaster, and being part of our local community matters to us. The cafes, restaurants, markets, businesses, and people who serve and drink our coffee are our neighbors. Delivering by bicycle keeps us physically connected to those neighborhoods in a way that's hard to replicate from behind the wheel of a delivery van.
It also reflects our belief that businesses can think differently about how they operate. Not every delivery can happen by bicycle, but when it makes sense, why not?
A bike takes up less space, uses fewer resources, and turns something as ordinary as a wholesale coffee delivery into a much more direct connection between our roastery and the businesses we work with.
Coffee Roasted in Oakland, Connections Around the Bay
Bicycle Coffee has always been about more than a bag of coffee.
It’s about the people who roast it, the people who deliver it, the baristas who brew it, the local businesses that put it on their shelves, and ultimately the people who drink it. That connection is also why supporting our community and organizations doing meaningful work beyond it is such an important part of who we are.
Our delivery route might take us from Oakland to Alameda, Emeryville, Berkeley, and beyond, but the idea behind it remains simple: roast great coffee, support our community, and find a better way to get it there.
Sometimes that better way happens to have two wheels.
And there’s another reason we love bicycles: riding is fun. It gets us outside, keeps us active, and allows us to move through and experience the communities we call home. Staying active is good for the body, and when something can be good for us, better for the environment, and actually enjoyable, why not make it part of our work too?
That’s part of what Bicycle Coffee is about. Something as simple as riding a bike can have multiple benefits, from delivering coffee and staying active to connecting with our community and supporting a different way of getting around.
So the next time you see someone riding around the East Bay with Bicycle Coffee in tow, there’s a good chance your next bag of coffee or your next latte is making its way to you.
And yes, we really do deliver it by bicycle.
