How to balance 1000 eggs on 2 wheels
The world's only egg delivery cargobike 🥚🥚🥚
Hello everyone and welcome to Issue #26 of Cargobike Culture!
This week we’re talking to Simon Boot, owner of The Dalston Egg Shop. He’s transporting thousands of eggs a week across seven London boroughs via bicycle and had a lot to tell me about how it works.
Also, did you know we’re on Instagram now? Take a look.
The Dalston Egg Shop
When I was growing up, we’d have milk delivered every morning by the milkman. At 5am I’d hear his little electric cart stop outside and recognise the clink-clink of the old glass bottles being taken away, and new, full bottles put on the doorstep.
Whilst you can’t get your milk delivered anymore, if you live in north east London, you might just be able to get some of the freshest eggs possible brought straight to your front door. All thanks to Simon Boot, of The Dalston Egg Shop.
I met Simon over Zoom to find out his story and how he eventually ended up delivering hundreds of eggs a week via a cargobike.
In 2015 Simon was trying a low carb diet and began to eat a lot more eggs. Having grown up on a farm in Tasmania, he knew how good a fresh farm egg could be. However the only eggs he could get hold of in central London were disappointing to say the least.
So he went looking for happier chickens and better eggs. He found them in the fields of a like minded farmer who had also recently gone back to school and completed an MBA. This inspired them to find a way to stop the farm business being reliant on supermarkets, and to deliver fresher, happier eggs to the end customers.
A partnership was born, but with one snag, the minimum order was ten dozen eggs. And even Simon would struggle to get through 120 eggs every week.
So faced with another challenge, Simon found another solution. At the time he was running a startup accelerator in London. With his colleagues he setup the Accelerator Egg Club who’s members would happily buy the excess eggs every week.
All was well until 2020, when the team were all forced to work from home and unable to take the excess eggs off Simon’s hands.
Adapting to the situation once again, Simon took to the internet to advertise his eggs around the local community. And thanks to the pandemic baking boom and a national egg shortage in supermarkets, business was booming.
Simon and his trusty Burley bike trailer would deliver the eggs around the neighbourhood and being an essential food delivery worker, he had a good excuse to be outside too.
Today that business has grown into The Dalston Egg Company which delivers thousands of eggs a week to hungry Londoners across seven boroughs. And many of them, arrive at people’s front doors in the world’s only dedicated egg delivery cargobike.
Now even for me, someone who’s seen a lot of cargobikes, the sight of a thousand eggs strapped to a bike is unusual. ‘When people see it, they're equal parts amazed and horrified on the riders behalf’ says Simon.
I think that horror is because, instinctively we know this shouldn't work. You shouldn’t be able to cycle with hundreds of eggs on the notoriously bumpy roads of London, and not end up with an omlette at the end.
‘Eggs are a horrible business to be in’ jokes Simon when I quiz him on this. ‘They’re fresh, they’re fragile, there’s a reason people don’t do this’.
But by trial and error, and some physics lessons, Simon figured it out.
‘Learning how to carry an egg is a real process’ Simon explains. When he first started out, the eggs were in the front basket of his normal bike. Having the eggs directly over the front axel wasn’t ideal and a lot of eggs were sacrificed.
The next step was a Burley bike trailer. This worked better as most of the eggs were now suspended on a fabric base between the wheels. Breakages only happened when there was an egg from an older hen, which produce thinner shells.
But despite the trailer, and adding an extra bike and trailer for a second rider, the capacity still wasn’t enough for the business to keep scaling.
So the next step (and the reason I’m writing about an egg delivery company), was a cargobike.
At this point in the companies history, Simon was still working full time and doing the egg deliveries in the evening. ‘I was getting tired after working all day and then cycling for miles delivering eggs’. He knew he needed a more efficient solution which could carry more stock, and give him an easier time in the saddle. A cargobike was the answer.
But as we’ve discussed at length in this newsletter, cargobikes are expensive, and with his startup background, Simon knew that the key to this business would be to keep costs as low as possible (and plus being half Dutch himself, he ‘loves a bargain’).
An affordable solution emerged in the form of an eBay listing for a used Urban Arrow cargobike. He won it for a good price, and suddenly he could carry hundreds of eggs with some very welcome assistance from the electric motor. It also proved a winner for the eggs as they were now suspended between each wheel and breakages from riding dropped to near zero
So the eggs were instantly thrilled with their new ride, but Simon wasn’t. ‘After my first ride, I thought I’d made a huge mistake’ he admitted.
There can be a steep learning curve to riding a cargobike, and Simon’s experience was similar. ‘It was absolutely terrifying with so much fragile stock precariously balanced on the front of this bike.’
After a week though, things were okay and Simon loved his new ride. ‘It's such a joy to ride. It's so stable. It really has been a revelation’ explained Simon.
On the road, it’s an eye catching sight. But despite that, Simon quickly realised that all the attention wasn’t helpful if people didn’t know who you were. So he quickly ordered some printed side boards for £40 to advertise the business.
Outside of work, the bike also gets a lot of use by Simon and his girlfriend. After throwing a couch cushion into the front, the pair love using the bike to get to parks for BBQs. After not owning a car for 20 years, the cargobike has given Simon a level of freedom which he didn’t know he’d missed.
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Finally, Simon had some advice to share with other small business owners considering adding a cargobike to their fleet. Firstly, if you’re doing deliveries, try and find a way to give it a go by borrowing or renting. And if you decide to get one, try the secondhand market.
Secondly, there are lots of incidental benefits, like using the bike as an eye catching portable billboard or being able to use it outside of work.
And finally, cargobikes hold their value really well, so if it doesn’t work out you it will be pretty easy to pass on.
Newsletter recommendation
If you’re interested in cargobikes (and lets assume you are since you got to the bottom of this newsletter), take a look at Très Gros Vélo. It’s a French language cargobike newsletter by Clément Fouillet.
I imagine most of my readers French is as poor as mine, but most browsers will do translation now, and even if yours doesn’t, he always has lots of nice photos to browse.
Next April I’m running the London Marathon in aid of Mind. Mind is a mental health charity in the UK who do crucial work campaigning for healthcare services, whilst also offering direct help and support to those in need. As regular readers know, this is an issue close to my head heart and I’ve set an ambitious £2000 target.
If you’d like to donate to my efforts, you can do so on my JustGiving page.
Thanks for reading and see you next time!
Eggcellent! His customers must be eggstatic! I don't imagine Clément over at Très Gros Vélo would be interested in that many eggs, mind, probably for him un œuf is un œuf...
I'll get my coat.
What a fun story!