Knucklehead Café has opened its mobile café outside of the new Harley Davidson location in Moncton. Vanessa Hickey and Joey Landry, the café’s co-owners, say things have been going very well over their first month in business.

Knucklehead Café is just that, a café. However, rather than being run out of a brick-and-mortar store like a typical café, it is run out of a mobile trailer.

Hickey says she has worked at and managed cafés ever since she was in high school and had been thinking for a while about how to branch out on her own. When they were working on building the new Harley Davidson location at 1809 Main Street in Moncton, she was presented with the perfect opportunity.

“[Joey] was at a meeting and they were talking about when they were going to build Harley Davidson on Main Street, the new store, and they had mentioned just having something in the parking lot just for hospitality and things like that,” Hickey tells Huddle.

Since Landry does operations at Harley Davidson as his full-time job, he presented this idea to Hickey, knowing that she was considering how to start her own café. She then thought that this would be the perfect way to try branching out on her own and seeing how it goes.

Having opened on May 12th alongside the new Harley Davidson store, Hickey says that Knucklehead Café has been going extremely well.

“It’s been great, I have so much support. I’ve worked downtown probably this whole time for like, probably 15 years now,” says Hickey. “And Joey knows, he’s part of the biker world so, if it’s not someone that recognizes me from other cafés, just knowing that I give good service, it’s somebody that Joey knows that just wants to support.”

Currently, Hickey says that Knucklehead Café has a variety of sandwiches, drinks, and sweets since all that they have for equipment right now are an espresso machine and a panini press. However, Hickey says that she is looking into upgrading the trailer with more equipment and adding some breakfast options to the menu.

“I kind of just make up our own sandwiches, right now we do ham and Swiss, those are going really well, and we have actually a signature sandwich. It’s a Knuckle Sandwich,” Hickey tells Huddle.

Since Knucklehead Café is run out of a mobile trailer, Hickey says that they are also considering going to some events over the summer. The only dilemma that they face is whether or not to remain at Harley Davidson every day for their regular customers or explore other places with new people.

“We want to have fun and we want to go do it, but I don’t want to take the chance of losing like the regular customers that would come every day for their coffee,” says Hickey.

However, with Harley Davidson being closed on Canada Day this weekend, Hickey says that they are considering going out with Knucklehead Café to local events. They will also be present at The Backroad Ball on the weekend of July 7th in Riverglade.

Ryley Roach is a student intern with Huddle, an Acadia Broadcasting content partner.