All Aboard: Brake Bread Adds a Unique Gathering Space 

In late August, the owners of Brake Bread, a local bakery located at 1174  West 7th, struggling with limited seating and wanting a space for customers to connect with one another, made a purchase they thought could help solve their problems: a bus.

“The idea of the bus,” explains Nate Houge, manager and co-owner of Brake Bread, “was that we just don’t have any indoor seating anymore. We did before COVID, and then we ran out of space during COVID, and as production grew, we took over the lobby area. And then, when we opened up the walk up window, we still needed all the space we could get.” 

The first ideas, however, were something much different from a bus. “We reached out to a couple people that do awnings and vestibules,” Houge continued, “but it was very expensive, and then, because it’s on the sidewalk, you have to make sure that it meets city requirements, and there were lots of little details surrounding that which we just didn’t have the money for.” This led them to begin to look for a more mobile and affordable solution.

Houge’s inspiration for using a bus for seating came from a visit to his oldest child in college a few years back. He recalled, “There’s a drive-in there called Lucky’s, and they have an old, 50s city bus that they turned into seating.” 

This set off the idea, and he began searching for suitable buses, finding two initial options. However, he added, “One of them didn’t run, and the other one had some other things going on with it.'”

During a Wednesday meeting with his co-owner, Micah Taylor, they were reviewing these two buses when a third option popped up. Houge explained, “My co-owner, Micah Taylor, checks in on Wednesdays. We had a meeting and I was like, these are the two buses I’m looking at. And pulled them up. And then this one,” referring to the bus we were currently sitting in, “was on there as a third bus.”

Ultimately, the deciding factor was the price. Houge stated, “The other buses were $3-4,000 each, and this one was $1,500 and was in our price range.”

That same day, Houge emailed the owner, who allowed them to buy the bus. The following day, Houge, Taylor, and their friend Jason, who all perform in a band together, had a show in Northfield, Minnesota. After the gig on Friday morning, they began their drive to Madison, Wisconsin to pick up the bus before driving it back through Wisconsin and into Minnesota. 

“We parked it here and then had to gut the whole thing,” Houge explains, describing the initial stages of renovating the bus. “All the seats came out, all the floors came out. Everything was bolted down and rusty, and then all the cushions came off, because those had rotted.”

The renovation process involved repurposed materials coming from the community. However, they have added new pieces as well, such as heaters and a solar panel that will eventually power them. Other projects Houge tells me include “cleaning up the wiring, getting this table in,” pointing to the table on the floor in front of us, “which isn’t in right now, because that’s where all the heater work is going on, and then just cleaning it up.” 

Though currently not open to customers, the bus has already hosted an event – a graduation party for a student worker. “We had everything ready, everyone came on, and then we took some things apart, so it’s kind of a work in progress. And I think it always will be,” states Houge. 

The plan is to open the bus a few days a week during the winter, initially on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, creating a space for people to connect with one another. “The hope is that it’s for people to gather, not to work, which is why I’m avoiding opening it up on Wednesdays and Thursdays for now. I think it’s really important to create places where people can connect human to human because I think there’s already lots of places where we can connect with our screens,” Houge emphasizes. 

The bus will continue to change as people come and interact with it, and the owners are open to ideas of what the community would like to see from it. 

If you go:

Brake Bread is open Wednesday-Sunday, 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. See their menu and more at brakebread.com.