A customer sips coffee while waiting for their bike to be finished at Madhouse Cafe in Roxbury.Photo: Chaiel Schaffel/WBZ NewsRadio
BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — How do you take your coffee? How about with a side of octane?
Madhouse Cafe in Roxbury certainly does. At first glance, the storefront near Nubian Square appears to be a cozy café. But a set of wide double windows in the back give coffee-drinkers a view directly into the cafe's sister-store, a motorcycle shop called Madhouse Motors.
J.Shia owns the bike shop, which started in one form more than a decade ago, and moved into this current space about three years ago. At first, she said, there wasn't supposed to be a coffee shop in the store at all.
"Let me build a waiting room," she said. "That was going to be my office, with a Keurig and a couple folding chairs. And I got a little carried away," Shia said with a laugh.
Over the course of two and a half years, J built the coffee shop with a group of friends, with a lot of that effort coming from her own hands. She herself was the general contractor on the construction job, a development that she jokingly called "the biggest mistake of my life."
At first, the City of Boston was less than thrilled with the idea of sectioning off part of a warehouse-based motorcycle repair shop and making it into a café. Shia applied for, and was rejected on, a dozen different building plans. Eventually, though, the regulators came around.
"Historically there's been this barrier between a mechanic and the consumer's trust," she said. J sees the windows in the back of the coffee shop as a form of literal consumer transparency, where customers can actively see the work being done on their bikes. But its more than that.
"It's also, you get to see all of these wildly rare historic machines getting worked on, that often you only get to see in magazines or on TV," she said. Customers will come in just to watch.
The coffee shop has turned into more than a waiting room for the bike shop. J said most of the people that come now are just people from the neighborhood who want coffee and a place to hang out. She credits her staff and the community with the place's success.
"The support has been so insanely heartwarming. People coming to bring me food from down the street, and helping me carry things in. I've been all over the city, and this is by far the most amazing neighbors that there could be."
WBZ NewsRadio's Chaiel Schaffel (@CSchaffelWBZ) reports.
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