New Bike Shop and Cafe to Celebrate Grand Opening April 13 and 14

This season you don't need your own bike to tackle the Montour Trail.

Not far from trail milemarker 27 and Southpointe, The Tandem Connection offers every kind of bike for rent or sale, hot coffee, baked goods and even barbecue.

The shop and cafe will celebrate its grand opening on April 13 and 14 with live music, free barbecue samples, free snacks for kids, a drawing for a new bike and more.

The owners are Seth and Laurie Fosmire and David and Lori Poe. 

Seth and Laurie are longtime sales and marketing pros. David is an entrepreneur and his wife, Lori, a certified nutritionist and runner. Acquainted through business, the couples often encountered each other on the Montour Trail. When new trail bridges over Morganza Road and Georgetown Road gave users access to a century-old building that once served as a coal company store, the four started musing about turning it into a bike rental shop.

“We decided we would just start moving toward it, and if something stopped us, we'd stop,” Seth said. “Nothing stopped us.”

They hit a rut, though, on the trail toward financing. “The banks that we went to, I don't think they really understood what this was here,” Seth said. “All they saw was a 100-year-old building and people wanting to rent bikes and sell coffee.”

Montour Trail Council President, Ned Williams, suggested that the couples call The Progress Fund, which encourages and supports trail-side business development as part of their Trail Town Program initiative.

The Progress Fund loaned $289,000, financed in part by Pennsylvania Small Business Credit Initiative funds from the Department of Community and Economic Development. That provided the bulk of the $340,000 in capital needed to launch The Tandem Connection.

The Tandem Connection, located at 5 Georgetown Road, Hendersonville, now offers, for sale or rent, bicycles, tagalongs, kiddie trailers, jogging strollers and, of course, tandems.