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Venture North Bike • Walk • Coffee is a place for healthy jump-starts, new connections, and youth employment opportunities.

Add yourself to the equation, and together we'll be an unlimited source of energy: for mentoring kids, promoting active lifestyles and providing a new hub of well-being for the Twin Cities community.

GIVE NOW

You'd like to donate your bike to our mechanics apprentice program? Great! Thanks for thinking of Venture North!

Our youth mechanic apprentice program relies on your contribution of bike-shop-quality bikes for our up-and-coming mechanics to work on. What does "bike-shop-quality" mean? It means we'll take any type or style of bike from manufacturers like Surly, Trek, Raleigh, and Bianchi (check out this list of brands we'd like). Bikes on this list generally have quality parts that, when in the hands of our mechanic apprentices, can be refurbished and given a new life. (If your bike has a sticker on it from a bike shop, that's a good indicator that it will be a good teaching tool for our apprentices, who will refurbish it so we can sell it to support the training program.)

Bikes from department stores (branded Huffy, Magna, Pacific, Vertical, Next, and even some of the newer Schwinns) don't hold adjustment well, and make poor teaching tools for our new mechanics. The extent of repair that is needed for some of these bikes to be safe and fun to ride usually exceeds the initial purchase price of the bike. We will gladly provide information on where you can donate these bikes!

Stop on by our new shop and see in person what we're all about!