On the surface it sounds like something that might have limited appeal. More for the East London cycling fraternity perhaps.
Look Mum No Hands is a cycle café/bar located on Old Street, a bustling road that takes you straight into the heart of Shoreditch from Central London.

It’s a road that gets little respite from the heavy traffic that slumbers along it. Before the opening of Look Mum No Hands in May 2010 it felt like a place stuck between two destinations. Nobody stopped for long, unless looking to hire office-cleaning equipment. Even the people on foot seemed to be in their own worlds, locked in transit.
It would be an unlikely setting for a café, if it wasn’t for the
cycling bit.

Old Street enjoys a constant stream of cyclists, couriers and commuters passing up and down all day long. What's more, there is no sign of things getting any quieter. London is in the grip of a cycling revolution. Journeys in the capital have risen by 80% since 2000. There are now an estimated 480,000 journeys everyday. The Barclay’s Cycle Hire scheme, launched a couple of months before Look Mum No Hands, added another 6,000 bikes on the streets of London overnight. It’s no wonder they’ve been busy since the day they opened.

Founders Lewin, Matt and Sam set up Look Mum No Hands without a formal business plan, just a belief in what they were doing. They’d talked about it for years, mainly pub chats that didn’t go anywhere. Then the moment came when Matt was made redundant from his job in financial services. After all the years of talk, this was the catalyst. They set about finding a space but didn’t quite realise what a prime position they had until after they’d signed the lease. It was in the days leading up to the opening when they were getting ready, painting the walls, that they realised the sheer volume of cyclists going past. Initially it had been the space rather than the location that had got them excited. It was perfect for what they had in mind, somewhere bigger than the usual café, big enough to house their two life long passions – coffee and cycling.

Both brilliantly compete for your attention throughout the space. Wheel rims hang over the bar counter and bikes lean against the tables. You often need to bypass Sam, t-shirt covered in oil, to get to the bar. You’d be forgiven for thinking it was a bicycle workshop if it wasn’t for the seriously purposeful-looking Marzocco Linea coffee machine. Across the entire length of the space there is a low hum of activity. It’s a calm, rhythmical blend of bike tubes being pumped, cranks being tightened and the whizzing of a modified Anfim coffee grinder.

Crossing the threshold of Look Mum No hands is a bit reminiscent of entering a child’s bedroom. A child with a fanatical interest in something, whether it be cars, football or girls. With posters covering every inch of wall space, it reflects the owners’ simple love for all things cycling-related. It’s not the sort of place that caters to the niche crowd. It’s not aimed at the Rapha road racers, the courier ‘fixie’ riders or the Bobbin Bike (‘Make do and Mend’) nostalgists. It’s much more open than that. It manages to appeal to everyone, from the non-cyclist to the Giro d’Italia, never-miss-a-stage, enthusiast. That’s why the name works so well. Look Mum No Hands reminds us of all the things we felt about cycling when we were kids. It’s a name most of us can relate to.

Testament to that is the mix of people. “In the evening you can see some people on their laptops, some reading books and others having a beer watching the cycling on the screen. There aren’t many places like that around here”, Lewin says. The mix also extends to the non-cyclists with a once a week knitting group and a planned ‘make your own bunting’ class happening soon.

The café is as much a voice for the community as it is for Matt, Lewin and Sam. Customers are encouraged to put posters and postcards up and there always seems to be a new exhibition hanging from the walls. When we met, spreads from the latest issue of Bristol-based cycling magazine BoneShaker were hanging, like socks on a washing line, across the length of the space. “They’re a nice bunch of guys so we want to help them”, remarks Lewin.

Working with people they like seems to go a long way at Look Mum No Hands. It’s part of the way they do business. Whether it’s helping stage an exhibition or choosing a coffee supplier, like the ‘nice’ people at Square Mile. Part of this venture for Sam, Lewin and Matt is being able to work on their terms. They get to choose who they do business with and being nice has become a form of currency. There’s a lot of talk about reciprocity in the world of business at the moment, a buzz word for our time, but for Look Mum No Hands it comes naturally.

For all the success over the past 12 months it hasn’t been easy. All three founders are working harder than ever. What’s changed is they’re doing something they believe in. Cycling is their passion and everyday they get to do the thing they love most. When they’re not at the café, they’re on their bikes. And when they’re not on their bikes, they’re lying awake at 3am excitedly thinking about what to do next.

www.lookmumnohands.com