Red Deer’s iconic Cool Beans double decker bus up for sale

The 1962 British Lodekka Double Decker Bus has quite the history around the globe. Traptow explained it began as a green-coloured children’s school bus in Manchester for 20 years, which can be immediately noticed from its low roof. At some point, he says it was brought by someone to the United States where they toured the country with it before becoming a bus for the Minnesota State University football team. It later became a tourism bus bringing seniors to various parks in Fargo, North Dakota before sitting unused in storage for 10 years.

Meanwhile, Traptow was living in the U.S. where he first saw a double decker bus converted into a café. The seed, or perhaps the bean, was thus planted to have his own similar café one day.

After moving to the Philippines with his family for a year where he traveled greatly for his job at WestJet, Traptow said he wanted to start a business they could run together. Revisiting his café idea, he researched for seven months before finding the bus on eBay. Meant to be, he says he outbid another buyer in the final 10 seconds of the auction for a total price of $12,000.

Spending $3,000 to get the bus back up and running and paying expensive import duties across the border, Traptow drove the six-speed manual transmission bus at its max of 70 km/hr for the 1,500 km trip to Innisfail with his son.

“Good thing it was mostly flat, so it was fairly easily to learn how to drive, but we had zero issues. The only issue we had was when we got pulled over by the cops at midnight in Saskatchewan, and I’m kind of panicking, but they just thought it was really cool so they wanted to hop on and get a tour,” he said jokingly.

He says he spent one year converting the bus into a restaurant, independently completing the plumbing, electrical work, and upholstery, including repainting it to its classic red color.

Opening in 2010, he says there were a few bumps in the road. They learned fast that working throughout the winter would not be an option in the poorly insulated frame and a lack of funds left no room for advertisement, further challenged by various changes in location.

However, he says the community began to notice the café when they finally stationed in 2011 at the church lot across City Hall, where they remained for the next six years.

Cool Beans quickly became Red Deer’s Friday hot spot as Traptow built a front deck for swing dancing nights and pioneered Food Truck Fridays. Beginning with one food truck, he says the event grew to 12 alternating trucks over the six years.

Swing dance Fridays. (Supplied)

READ: Food Truck Fridays kicks off new season at new location

Although not exactly a food truck himself, he did have two 782 and 784 Volkswagon ‘hippy vans’ that he converted to mobile coffee shops to visit markets, weddings and other community events.

He reminisced on the popularity of the Friday gatherings, attracting hundreds of residents to the downtown core, including appearances from Spandy Andy, local performer and entertainer who danced strictly in his famous spandex. He remembered viewing parades and televised bicycle races all from the windows of the big red bus.

Spandy Andy on the bus (Supplied)

As the lot had been vacant for over 20 years, he described having a good relationship with the homeless population that frequented there, with few instances of vandalism. He says he would offer free sandwiches and coffee as they talked and shared stories together.

However, in 2016, he says the business was broken into eight times. The first time, he says, the community started a GoFundMe page and raised $5,000.

In their final year, he says they had 14 incidents of theft and vandalism, leaving them no longer able to obtain insurance. A seasonal business, he says they could not always tell passing by that something was wrong as windows were mainly broken in the back of the bus and squatters would sleep inside. He described toasters being stolen for petty cash, needles discarded around, the front door being broken, and the upstairs upholstery set on fire, covered in flour and calking. Although they had installed security alarms, he says little police activity existed at the time in the area at night.

In November 2017, the bus was towed and has been in storage ever since.

Cool Beans bus in storage. (Facebook)

Traptow expressed disappointment as the goal was for his kids to run the business together.

“That was all their first jobs and that was kind of the point. It’s really hard to have a small business in any town, so I think it kind of went its course. I probably wouldn’t have ended it the way it ended. Maybe somebody would’ve taken it over or we would have sold it as a business; we did try.”

“It was very iconic; it was a landmark in Red Deer for a long time.”

(Supplied)

At the beginning, Traptow says he considered revamping the bus, as he did years before, and move it to Victoria, British Columbia. He also considered downsizing and converting the bus into a home.

After five years in storage, he says he gets emotional at what it’s become, and wants to move forward.

“Part of me needed to put that away for a while because the ending was kind of a bad experience and so I needed to bury my head in the sand a bit and keep it in storage but I feel like it’s time. Hopefully someone can give it a new life and I’m sure they will,” he said.

Listed Monday on Facebook, he says he already has over 125 inquiries, with some particularly catching his eye. One couple from Manchester, who rode a similar school bus as children, voiced their desire to convert the bus into a tiny home, while another has expressed refurbishing it back into a café.

“I love the fact that it’s been so many different things like a school bus, football bus and tourism bus and coffee shop, so I’m really excited. I really want it to go to someone who’s going to transform it into a tiny home or burger place, whatever they do. To me, eventually, it would just get scrapped and that’s what I don’t want,” he said.

“I’ve put in a ton of hours and energy into it so I’m hoping that someone has the same passion for it.”

And so the journey of the double decker bus continues. What will she become and where will she go next?

Swing Dancing Fridays (Supplied)

by Alessia Proietti

Red Deer’s iconic Cool Beans double decker bus up for sale

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