Entrepreneurs Brooks Brizendine and Saurabh Chawla are excited to launch their new Pedicab venture in Ocean City, MD, because they say it will bring both a fun and environmentally conscious business to an area that has drifted from its 2001 All-American City status, in their opinions.

“I had seen pedicabs all over New York City and when one of my friends started riding in my hometown of DC, it just clicked,” Brizendine said of the creation of Ocean City, MD based Coastal CruZn, LLC. “Saurabh and I are both passionate about doing our part to contribute to the environment, so the progression into creating a pedicab business just came naturally.”

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Tags: America, brizendine, Brooks, Cabs, Coastal, conscious business, CruZn, driver, Drivers, entrepreneur, Environmentally, fun, hybrid bike, New York City, Ocean City, ocean city md, Pedicab, pedicab business, Pedicab News, pedicabs, recyclable items, recyclables, saurabh

From Pedicabs to Peddling Cosmetics, Economy Pushes Some to Seek Extra Work

Shelby Shenkelman enjoys working as a pricing analyst for a company that produces airline meals. At 25, she is making more than $50,000 a year.”It should not be a bad salary,” she said. That is, unless you have $30,000 in student loans, a $300 a month car payment, some credit card debt, grocery bills that seem to be going up and rent that definitely is going up. “I can survive on my one paycheck, but it’s very, very difficult. It’s very, very tight,” the Reston resident said. In December, she decided to take a second job. Two nights during the week and on weekend days, she works as a personal shopper at a clothing store, earning $9 an hour plus commission.

With a grim economic outlook for 2009, more Americans are not just cutting costs but are finding ways to make more money by taking part-time or odd jobs, employers and economists said. Many are doing it because their wages have stalled while the cost of living has gone up. Others are picking up extra work to pay off debt or cushion their savings. For others, it’s a backup plan in case they get laid off from their full-time jobs.

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Tags: America, backup plan, Cabs, company, economic troubles, odd jobs, Pedicab, Pedicab News, pedicabs, Safety, second job, TIG, traffic, US, ways to make more money, weekend, weekend jobs

By Steve Hawkes
Tim Mason has heard it all. Ever since the Tesco executive launched the supermarket giant’s Fresh & Easy venture in America a year ago, analysts have accused him of missing sales targets by a mile, while unions pushing for negotiating rights have complained that staff morale has fallen through the floor.

The critics were out again last week after The Times revealed that, faced with recession, Mr Mason was being forced to slow the store rollout programme. Worried? He hardly looks it. One minute, he’s jumping on to a Fresh & Easy rickshaw for a photo shoot; the next, he’s leading a chorus of Happy Birthday at the head office in Palm Beach, Los Angeles, to mark the chain’s first anniversary.

Asked about the prospect of a looming supermarket price war in America, he jokingly cites the line about amplifiers in This is Spinal Tap, the spoof “rockumentary”: “We’ll do better than the rest,” he says. “Our knobs go up to 11.”

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Tags: America, culture, difference, future, Los Angeles, Manhattan, market, marketing, Newspaper, Pedicab, Pedicab News, Product, recession, rickshaw, route, San Francisco, Story, US, weekend

Past Speaker: Startup Junkie Underground

SPEAKER: Steve Meyer – Founder and CEO Mainstreet Pedicab
DATE: August 20 & 22, 2007
TOPIC: Peddling Your Way to Success – The Mainstreet Pedicab Story

Pedicabs are human-powered taxis seen in many of the major cities around the world. They work well for not only transporting people, but also for the delivery of food and merchandise.

In a world that is becoming overwhelmed with too many cars, pedicabs offer a green and sometimes romantic alternative. While they work best over short distances ranging from 2 to 10 blocks, they are fully capable of traversing much greater distances.

Steve Meyer didn’t invent the pedicab, but he is in the process of perfecting the marketplace for it. With multiple income streams and a loyal following, the pedicab industry is breaking into new territory.

Here is what it took for Steve Meyer to become one of the leading figures in the pedicab industry, and how Donald Trump had a hand in his success.

Speaker: Steve Meyer is the Founder and CEO of Mainstreet Pedicab in Broomfield and has worked most of his professional life self-employed, interspersed with periods of employment.

He attended the University of Colorado from 1972 trough 1979 getting both a BA in Environmental Biology and an MA in Economics. He spent more than a year of this time traveling in S. America, Asia, Europe and Africa.

For many years, Meyer worked in the real estate industry doing economic and market research for real estate developers. His interest in the redevelopment of downtown areas and his experiences in Asia were key factors in his development of Main Street Pedicabs. Main Street was founded in 1992 and is the largest manufacturer of this type of vehicle in N. America.

Tags: America, Colorado, DaVinci, davinci institute, donald trump, Main Street, Main Street Pedicabs, manufacturer, multiple income streams, Press Releases, professional life, SPEAKER, Speaker Steve Meyer, steve meyer, Steve Meyer - Founder, Story, success speaker, taxis, Transport, university of colorado, Your Way

Apr 19th 2007 | DENVER, LONDON AND NEW YORK
From The Economist print edition

Regulation threatens a booming business with, er, a cyclical downturn

AP

A PEDICAB borrowed from a friend for a conference on pedestrianisation in 1990 got Steve Meyer pedalling what is now a fast-moving business. Hoping to liven up the often-deserted streets of downtown Denver, his hometown, he bought two of the bicycle taxis. But they did not work very well, so he started building what has since become the industry standard, with 21 gears, hydraulic brakes and so on. His firm, Main Street Pedicabs, now caters to rising demand both in America and abroad.

Alas, regulation in two of the biggest markets for pedicabs threatens to puncture Mr Meyer’s upbeat mood. Last month New York’s city council voted to impose onerous rules on the hitherto unregulated pedicab industry and to limit the number of pedicabs to 325. A protest prompted Michael Bloomberg, New York’s mayor, to veto the new rules, apparently out of entrepreneurial fellow feeling for the pedicab drivers, but the city council is likely to override his veto, perhaps as soon as next week.

Pedicabs first started operating in New York in the mid-1990s, but their numbers soared from around 100 to over 500 after they featured in an episode of Donald Trump’s business reality-television contest, “The Apprentice”, in 2004. For the sort of fit youngster who wants a flexible job—many drivers in New York are actors or students—it pays well: $300 on a good day, though typically half that. The cost of entry is low, perhaps $4,500, compared with $400,000 for a yellow-taxi medallion.

Pedicabs are under attack in London, too, where an estimated 400 operate. Transport for London, a regulatory body, is reviving its controversial claim that pedicabs should be regulated as “hackney carriages”, like the city’s black cabs. Chris Smallwood, chairman of the London Pedicab Operators Association and boss of Bugbugs, a 60-strong pedicab firm, says treating pedicabs like black cabs would impose unbearable costs on the industry. He has helped to draft an amendment to a bill now before the House of Lords that would introduce lighter pedicab regulations.

There is striking agreement between the pedicab trade groups in both London and New York that some sort of regulation is needed, not least to deter rogue operators. But current proposals seem to serve the interests of motor-taxi drivers, who want their rivals off the road.

The irritation is that pedicabs do not compete much with motor-taxis, say Messrs Meyer and Smallwood. Pedicab journeys tend to be the short trips that drivers of gas-guzzling taxis hate most. Pedicabs’ main competition is walking, says Mr Meyer, who points out that if New York’s 12,000 yellow cabs were replaced with pedicabs, “there would be a lot less congestion”. Here’s hoping that politicians on both sides of the Atlantic cast their votes for pedal power.

Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

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