F1 pit stops for Deliveroo riders: our convenience-obsession has created a new kind of bike shop

Piccadilly Gardens, anytime of the day or night. Between the planters decorated with faded golden bees opposite McDonald's, a group of delivery riders perch on their bike seats, awaiting orders. These men — from Afghanistan, Syria, Eritrea, Sudan, India, Morocco, Somalia, Algeria — have become so commonplace as to be invisible to passersby; gliding on electric bikes through the mist, haze, hail and snow of late winter. 

But the effortless movement of the bikes belies a very real toil. “The apps are scamming us,” says 22-year-old Saad, who arrived in Manchester from India a month and a half ago. He says he understood that the company he is riding for paid £3 for every mile he cycled, but showing me the £14 he has made in the first four hours of his shift, he reckons he is getting more like £1 a mile. 

And in this job, miles matter. Not just because of the pressure they put on the riders, but the toll they take on the electric-powered bikes they rely on. Bikes that, by the way, are not supplied or maintained by the delivery companies, because the riders are not their employees but independent contractors. So as they thread through the city centre, burst tyres, punctured tubes, cracked brake pads and snapped spokes are for them to fix. 

Problems like this might mean a degree of inconvenience for an average cyclist: catching a bus rather than cycling to a friend’s house. But for a delivery rider, the consequences can be far more significant: it can mean the difference between making enough money to survive, or working at all. 

This need for hyper-fast repairs has meant a new type of business has sprung up in response. In your average bike repair shop, you can wait days to receive your repaired bike back. This new incarnation of the Mancunian bike shop feels closer to a Formula 1 pitstop. But what’s at stake for riders – and for the rest of us?

Last Friday afternoon. Izzadin, a 22-year-old from Sudan with a single patch of hair on his chin, sits in Wang Naas E-Bikes on Princess Road, whispering things into his phone and waiting for his bike, a red Rockhopper — a Decathlon staple e-bike that goes for about £800 — to be fixed. He points it out to me, “the one without the wheel”, amongst the piles of other bike chassis, pumps, screws and the thermal backpacks riders carry food in. 

Doing the fixing is John, but John isn’t there and Izzadin is alone. It is -2°C outside and the curbs glitter with ice. “It wasn’t this cold last year,” Izzadin says. He’s wearing hi-viz workwear with a tracksuit underneath. “It’s dryer this year, but colder.” Izzadin left Sudan last year, taking a boat from Calais. When I ask why he left he says: “it was everyday fighting, killing. You see it on social media, 1,000, 2,000 people a day.” He goes outside to smoke and passing him in the doorway is John, tall and laconic with a scar that flowers out from his left temple. 

John, who is also Sudanese, opened the shop in August. “I wanted to find a source of income. I have a knowledge of bikes,” he tells me, sipping from a cup of black tea stirred with mint leaves at a cafe a few doors down from Wang Naas. “Where did I get my knowledge of bikes? You just get the skills. You know, in this life, everyone has something he knows to do.” John remains vague on both his expertise and his life, leaving Sudan in 2019 was “a long story” and not one he wishes to discuss. But he is clear in his belief that he, in offering rapid repairs for Manchester’s delivery riders, has found a gap in the market.

“When I came here, I used to have a bike,” John explains. “And here, if you want to do anything, you need an appointment. I realised: ‘Okay, here, time is the most important thing to everyone. So I thought: ‘Okay, I’ll do a quick service.’ And everyone loves that.” 

For some riders, a puncture is the end of their shift, there isn’t the time to book an appointment. And even so, if you book a morning appointment at a bike repair shop you can expect to be asked to come back that afternoon.

For example, Pop-up Bikes, a repair shop in the city centre that offers same-day service, asks riders to bring their bikes in before 9am and collect them after 5pm. “And if we can, we’ll fix your bike while you wait,” says its website, which invites customers to wait at the in-store cafe. “The majority of our customer base are commuters,” one employee there told me over the phone. “So they leave their bikes in the morning and come back at the end of the day. We wouldn’t really be able to take too much on-the-spot stuff too.”

If your bike is just for riding into work or some exercise on the weekend, that’s fine. But this isn’t feasible if you’re a delivery rider. At Wang Naas, there is no “if we can”. Bikes are brought in, flipped upside down, fixed, turned round and sent back out the door. There might not be a toastie and an espresso on offer, but there’s room to stand.

Over the last four months, there have been queues of riders outside John’s door, needing a new tyre or set of brakes so they can get back to work, answering the endless stream of orders flowing down from the apartment buildings and offices in the city. 

Delivery riders use e-bikes, in which an electric motor aids pedalling. Certain laws govern these bikes, and not all riders adhere to them. “It has to be a 250 watt motor, travel 15 miles an hour, and have pedal assist,” says Lee, the owner of Chain Dog Cycles, a bike repair shop off Wilmslow Road.

Lee is slightly more established than John, with his business opening 18 months ago and marketed more towards the cycle-to-work dad than the delivery rider set. That said, he still sees dozens of riders every week needing quick repairs, some with food still hot on the back of their bikes: “I get jobs where they’re en route to a drop-off, and they’ve got a puncture. So I need to do it like that”, he says, snapping his fingers.

The existence of shops like Lee’s and John’s is essential because so much of a rider's work is in the heart of the city, meaning problems with tyres are inevitable. “In the city centre, the streets are full of glass,” John says. “I’m the closest to fix it for them, and I do it cheap.” For example, you’d expect to pay around £25 to have a tyre changed. John will do it for £10, maybe £12. For delivery riders who can, depending on how busy they are, make less than £20 in four hours, that’s important. 

Many riders use lower quality bikes because they’re cheap — one, the Allegro, is particularly popular at the moment — but end up needing repeat repairs. “These guys will run their bikes into the ground,” Lee says. The most common thing to repair is the spokes on the back wheel, because the weight exerted on them by the delivery bags makes them snap. Second to that is probably brake pads: “these guys are doing hundreds of miles a week”. Then there are the motors that power the bikes. 

Hassan — an employee at Mcr Bike and Scooter, opposite Strangeways — tells me riders usually need three batteries to make it through a shift lasting between 8 and 12 hours. Some bikes have three ports into which these batteries can be lodged, meaning the rider never needs to stop. “It’s about lasting as long as they can,” he says. When Mcr Bike and Scooter’s shutters rolled up at 11:03 yesterday, a Just Eat Rider was already standing outside awaiting repairs. 

Back in Wang Naas, five riders, three on their days off, watch as John and his colleague Khalil fix their bikes. The shop also serves as a place for riders to socialise and get out of the cold. “They know me,” John says. “Most of them are from my community, so it’s easy to deal with me, communicate with me. They relax, I fix their bike in front of them.”

There’s little structure or process to the shop and most of the prices appear to just be what John decides at that moment. Here he is haggling with one rider: 

“£90 for this,” John says. 

“£50.”

“Come on, bro.”

“What about a guarantee?”

John thinks for a second: “I’ll give you a month. You have an issue, you come here.”

“I’m your neighbour.”

“I know you’re my neighbour, but come on.”

The negotiation is interrupted by another rider leaving: “Habibi,” he says, fixing gloves to his handlebars. “I have to go now.”

Outside McDonald's on Piccadilly, riders congregate round the planters watching a homeless man argue with a passerby about shoes. I notice various people hanging around them. They’re not on bikes or dressed for delivery work, so who are they? “There's a large strong community of riders at Piccadilly,” one former rider tells me on Reddit, after I asked about this. “They're just friends, riders on a day off, or ex riders, stopping by to say hello.”

Most of the riders I speak to don’t want to be doing this job, and complain about its trappings. One, who asks not to be named, tells me how he has had three bikes confiscated in the four years he has been doing the job. All by police who say his bike doesn’t meet regulation. 

“The sad thing about the riders is, they’ve got the law against them,” says Lee, back at Chain Dog. Although he does agree these bikes pose a great danger to riders and the public: “I don’t touch them,” he says. Last September, the Telegraph reported how hundreds of people, including delivery riders, were caught riding these bikes, the speed and weight of which “massively” heightens the danger for pedestrians involved in collisions, according to police. “The heaviest one I’ve seen was in excess of 50kg…" one officer said. "If that impacts with somebody, it’s likely to cause either serious injury or, God forbid, death.”

In October last year, the fire service announced that e-bikes modified by parts bought online were becoming one of London’s fastest growing fire risks. As such, while it’s heartbreaking for riders to have their bikes confiscated, it’s easy to understand why these vehicles are subject to legal scrutiny.

“Then the police will fine them, confiscate them,” Lee continues. “The other side is criminals will rob them.” The rider on Piccadilly says it has cost him £4,500 to replace his confiscated bikes. “£1,500, £1,500, £1,500,” he says, adding it up. “Everytime: police.”

Away from McDonald's, sat on a piece of folded cardboard at the base of the Wellington monument is Ahmad. The index finger of his glove is cut off so he can more easily operate a touch screen. Ahmad is 20, and at 16 walked from Afghanistan to France following the fall of Kabul in 2021. Then he crossed the channel in a small boat.

He has been working as a delivery rider for the last seven months, doing four days a week to his three days taking English classes at Openshaw College. His family are still in Afghanistan and he has no contact with them. “It’s life, it's up and down,” he says. “[But] I feel safe here, happy I can do whatever I want.” 

“The thing I always like to ask them, afterwards,” Lee says back in the shop, “is: 'what do you want to do after this?' And you hear their hopes and dreams. They have ambition, they’re people.”

I ask Ahmad. “I want to be a cricketer. I played in Afghanistan and I was good.” Then a notification for a job comes through, and he heads off again.