|Newark Business|
Wooden Wheels Service and and beer with the first m By Drewe Phinny Contributing Writer Robbie Downward, David Ferguson and Chris Denney are enthusiastic mountain bicyclists who have decided to take their love for the sport to another level in the form of Wooden Wheels, a smart, savvy business located at 208 Shoppes at Louvres Drive in Newark. k. They debuted the current version n of the venerable Newark business around und six months ago, with a new location ion after success at several other locations ons through the years. “We used to come up here when our shop was in the (Newark) Shopping ing Center,” Downward explained. “That hat was years ago. We were at Fairfield eld Shopping Center. Then, before that, hat, we were behind Starbucks on Main ain Street.” Denney explained that Tom Harvey vey was the longtime owner of Wooden den Wheels until 2017. The current owners ners then reopened the business in 2018.. Over the past few years, Downward ard and Denney have found that the popularity of cycling is a natural complement to enjoying a glass of beer, whether it be after a trail ride or while waiting for a bike to be repaired. So a microbrewery seemed like a good idea. The internet played a factor in their plans. “With the brewery side of things,” Downward said, “you can’t fight the Internet, so you may as well adapt. In a retail market, we needed to come up with a different way to bring in commerce and the community.” A microbrewery became the perfect fit for what they were looking to do.
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Newark Life | Spring/Summer 2022 | www.newarklifemagazine.com
“The community can help us, so we’re trying to do as much as we can for them,” Downward explained. “In Delaware, if you brew beer on site, you can sell it with a brewer’s license and a special-use permit, without having a liquor license and without having to sell food.” Wooden Wheels can brew beer on site and offer it to customers. The owners are awaiting approval from the city to b be able to sell the beer, and the hope is th that that could happen this summer. Th The idea of combining breweries and bik bike trails is a popular trend right now, the Wooden Wheels owners said. “It’s bee been happening all over the place, alth although not so much in our region,” Do Downward said. “A lot of trail-oriented com communities are focused around the loc local biker and they make money off of iit. It’s not a brand new idea, by any me means.” Th The “Wooden Wheels” name has bee been a respected one in Newark for approximately 45 years. Not many bus businesses are a fixture in the community for that long. “T “The last one I remember was Post House,” Downward said. “They were around for 55 years.” Downward said that the Post House was on the list of Newark’s oldest businesses, and Wooden Wheels might be among the ten oldest businesses in the city, too. Originally, the name was Wood AND Wheels. “It was up in Kennett. Reed Rollins took it over and renamed it Wooden Wheels,” he explained. “We kind of changed the name for legal reasons to Wooden Wheels Service and Repair.” In a world where speeding cars pose challenges for bike Continued on Page 12
