About us

our mission

We provide students and the wider community with an accessible environment where they can learn to fix bicycles, share resources, and work together. We engage in cycling education, outreach and advocacy to promote biking as a safe and sustainable means of transportation.

Sustainability and responsible consumption are important parts of the Bike Kitchen’s mission. That is why we recycle and reuse bicycles – not only does it keep bikes out of the landfill, but it also enables us to build bikes out of used parts for our various programs.

History

The AMS Bike Co-op was founded in the spring of 1998 by a group of very dedicated students and the support of the AMS and Trek. The original purpose of the co-op was to build a shared fleet of purple and yellow bicycles that could be used by students to reduce the number of car trips on campus. This initiative was hugely successful and continues to be a foundation of the Co-op’s programming. The Co-op continued to expand its programs after P+Y was well-established, gaining a dedicated core of volunteers and becoming a hub for cycling on campus.

The most ambitious project of the Bike Co-op was to launch a nonprofit community bike shop, the Bike Kitchen. The Bike Kitchen was founded in 1999 through the support of BEST and with the help of Our Community Bikes. The shop was established to provide a space for students and other community members to learn how to use our tools to maintain, repair, and build their own bicycles. The Bike Kitchen also recycles abandoned and donated bikes to provide students and the wider community with reliable and reasonably priced bicycles and parts. In 2017 we partnered with the City of Vancouver in an effort to keep bikes out of the landfill and get them back in the hands of community members.

Today, the AMS Bike Co-op and Bike Kitchen work together to deliver programs that aim to make cycling more accessible for people all throughout the Lower Mainland.

We are part of the Vancouver Community Bike shop Network (VCBN), a coalition of community bike shops in Vancouver that cooperate to share resources and build capacity for a more diverse and inclusive cycling community.