Wheelys’ Organic Bike Cafés Blow Away Crowdfunding Record

Wheelys Café, a Swedish-based startup business that is a fully organic bicycle café that sells everything from coffee to apples and other healthy foods, has raised $830,000 in crowdfunding on the Swedish crowdsourcing site FundedByMe for expansion purposes, according to TechCrunch.

This is just the latest in a series of positive news for Wheelys Café, which has also found itself backed by Y Combinator to plot a future as a potential competitor to Starbucks and has raised $150,000 in funding in an earlier Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign.

Maria De La Croix, the company’s cofounder and CEO, told TechCrunch that Wheelys Café was founded because she couldn’t find any other job.

“I was looking for a job but was refused,” De La Croix told TechCrunch, adding that was probably due to the fact that she was sporting bright blue hair at the time. “So, I said, ‘F*** it, I’ll start a company myself.’ The plan wasn’t really to go global right away, but we suddenly had customers in Jordan and Chile and decided it was time to think big.”

Wheelys Café’s model is simple enough: A new bike costs about $5,400 plus a $199 monthly subscription with a one-year tie-in clause. The franchise has quickly grown to over 500 bike cafés in 65 countries so far, and Wheelys Café is also working on an app that will make it easier for customers to find the nearest location and even pre-order items so they will be ready once they get there.

The company’s crowdfunding campaign secured €740,000 from 167 investors, a FundedByMe record-breaking amount, at 410 percent funded, according to TechCrunch.