From a pub pop-up to Crouch End’s newest and oldest bike shop!
We established Butternut Bikes in May 2020 as a pop-up in Crouch End’s The Railway Tavern. After three weeks there, and with piles of thanks and love for the pub and people of Crouch End, Muswell Hill, Hornsey, Haringey and all around, we opened a shop around the corner on Crouch Hill.
Butternut Bikes came out of a mix of hard work, a passion for cycling, and a stroke of serendipity during the Covid-19 lockdown.
Gavin was working in a high street bike shop and fixing bikes around Crouch End and Hornsey in the spring of 2020. The name Butternut Bikes started as a joke, when Gavin’s girlfriend named her wifi network after her favourite vegetable. But Gav liked the alliteration – as well as the roasted vegetable – so it stuck. He jumped out of bed one night just to register the business name and Instagram account, and prepared to strike out on his own.
Meanwhile, a cycling mate and fellow bike mechanic on the other side of London was doodling graphic designs. The name Butternut came to him when he imagined a nut (the metal kind that goes with bolts) melting like creamy, golden butter. When he spotted Gav’s new Instagram account, @ButternutBikes, they got talking, fixing bikes together, and the shop was born.
