Edwards bike shop opens new location upvalley
The Kind Bikes and Skis will open in West Vail and will soon offer coffee
The Kind Bikes and Skis/Courtesy photo
West Vail has a new neighborhood bike shop. The Kind Bikes and Skis, which has been a staple in Edwards for two decades, just opened its upvalley shop on Aug. 4 in the former Northside Grab and Go location near the West Vail exit.
Chris Anderson bought The Kind Bikes and Skis in the spring of 2017 and knew early on that he would eventually expand and add a location in Vail.
“For the last few years, well, it started pre-COVID, we started looking at the Vail market because of the feedback that we received from customers and from locals in the West Vail area. They wanted to see a bike shop in their community,” Anderson said. “We had customers that would hop on the Interstate and come down to Edwards and say, “I wish you’d open something in Vail.'”
Anderson looked in Vail and Lionshead for space for a new shop, but also realized that there were plenty of bike and ski rental shops there already.
“What the community really needed was a neighborhood bike shop and then we thought why not throw a coffee shop in there, too, because they needed a neighborhood coffee shop there as well,” Anderson said. “A bike and coffee shop is something that I’ve always wanted to do, but it had to make sense. And, we don’t do coffee. We do bikes and we do skis. The coffee needs to be done by coffee people because it’s not an easy job to turn out good coffee consistently. We needed to bring in the pros.”
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So, Anderson called Marci and Larry Leith, owners of Yeti’s Grind, which has coffee shops in Vail Village, Edwards and Eagle.
“We’ve partnered with Yeti’s Grind for years on our group rides and we’re friends with Marci and Larry and they’re already involved in the cycling community. Larry started Tokyo Joe’s restaurants and the professional Tokyo Joe’s mountain bike race team,” Anderson said.
The coffee side of things isn’t ready quite yet at The Kind’s location in West Vail. Anderson said they hope to open that this fall, but in the meantime, the shop is stocked with accessories, apparel, shoes, helmets and they also do rentals and repairs. They will have mountain bikes, road bikes, recreational style bikes and hybrids available.
“Our square footage is about one-third the size of our Edwards location and we carry Specialized, Revel, Electra and Moots. We’ll have high-end Specialized bike rentals and demos in the e-bike and non-e-bike categories,” Anderson said. “People can try before they buy, or they can just rent if they want a premium rental experience, and we’ll do delivery and pick up within the town of Vail.”
Come winter, the shop will switch over to equipment like skis, snowboards, snowshoes, boots, bindings, helmets, gloves and more. Retail, rental and demo programs will be offered, and they’ll carry nine or ten different brands of skis like Black Crows, Nordica, Stöckli and Blizzard.
“We’re going to be your one-stop-shop for everything each season, and you can drive right here and park and we’re going to be less expensive than shops at the base of the ski resort,” Anderson said.
Follow the social media accounts of The Kind Bikes and Skis and Yeti’s Grind for details on when the coffee portion of the shop will be open this fall.
“We’re so excited to create a nice, vibrant community space with independently owned, family-owned businesses for the things that people in this neighborhood need, which is coffee, bikes and skis,” Anderson said.
