Seattle business owners: If you are approached by an enthusiastic, positive guy who wants to talk about how great bikes are, you may have met Ian Klepetar.
Ian travels the country on his bike promoting his program Bicycle Benefits wherever he ends up. He rolled into Seattle last week (and has crashed a couple nights on the floor of Seattle Bike Blog HQ).
“I am seeing how I can be of assistance to local efforts to get people biking,” he said. He also wants to get people excited about using Bicycle Benefits.
Bicycle Benefits is a program that encourages discounts and deals for people who ride bikes. Businesses can sign up for the program by offering a deal to anyone who has a bicycle benefits sticker on their helmet. Businesses can buy stickers for $2.50 and sell them for $5.
Best part is: The deals are great. There are already 60 or so businesses in Seattle signed up. Deals include 10 percent off at any Caffe Vita, buy-one-get-one tickets at Central Cinema and 15 percent off pizza at Snooze Junction. Not a bad deal just for riding your bike.
“We want the deal to be something exciting,” said Ian. “What’s going to get people to start making their trips by bicycle?”
Ian said he sees Bicycle Benefits as a way to even the playing field. After all, if you ride a bike to a business that pays lots of money to build and maintain “free” car parking spaces, you are paying for a parking space you are not using. Bicycle Benefits is a way for businesses to acknowledge that bicycling customers cost them less.
The program is also a way to entice people to try taking little trips by bicycle instead of driving. If you want a cup of coffee, it will cost you less if you ride. If you and your date ride to the theater, it’s half off your ticket purchase (plus it’s more romantic). That’s a pretty good reason to ride.
It’s also a way to support bicycle-friendly businesses. Aside from the $2.50 made on the sale of each sticker, the program also gives $200 to a bicycle-friendly business each month.
You may have noticed Bicycle Benefits stickers on sale at a few businesses around town already. However, this is the first time Ian has visited Seattle, and he is looking to bulk up the program all around town.
If you don’t want to wait for Ian to find you, you can sign up online now.
For a map of participating businesses and to see what they offer, check out the Bicycle Benefits website.
Comments
13 responses to “The value of offering customers Bicycle Benefits”
This is awesome, I’ll definitely be picking up a sticker and telling my friends to do the same.
Are these perks for employees or customers? I can’t really tell from this article.
[…] enthusiastic Ian Klepetar talks the benefits of about offering bicycle perks for […]
As a bicycle benefits user, the stickers are for anyone who has one. No matter where you get your sticker it works all over the city. So if you are an employee of a bike benefits business and you buy a sticker you could use at your job and any other place that is participating in the program.
Why are unhelmeted cyclists excluded from the scheme?
Ian stopped me the other day on the BGT in Wallingford and told me about the program. It is great to see that he is getting some online advertising as well!
I remembered seeing the little notices about Bicycle Benefits when I read this post – so I went to the closest place to my work, Zaw on Yale. Nope, they don’t have any stickers, not even quite sure they knew what I was talking about. Next stop: BootyLand on Pine. It took a call to the owner to find a sticker, but they did have a stash so I bought one. Today, I go into Katy’s on E. Union while 2020 Cycles fixes my flat – and cool, there’s a little Bicycle Benefits poster attached to the counter. “Bicycle Benefits? What’s that?” asks the barista. I show him my sticker and point to the little sign – 20% off! Not bad. but it took a lot of reminding. Thanks for highlighting this.
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