Building a mobile Repair Café: the story of Jena Repair Café
Oda is the main organiser of Repair Café Jena in East Germany. She talked us through the journey they undertook to build a repair café on a bus and shared lessons they’ve learnt along the way.
The repair café started about 5 years ago and now has around 10-30 active volunteers. But was never able to get settled in one location. Jena is quite a dense city and they found it increasingly difficult to find a permanent home. To solve this problem, Oda thought it would make sense to take the repair café on the road.
Initially, they used a prototype electric bicycle trailer from Carla Cargo 
to help them move from place to place around the city.
She also applied for funding from a lottery scheme to build a repair café bus. Unexpectedly, she won €10.000 of funding in November 2017. After a bit of soul-searching and a lot of research, she bought a 20-year-old MAN public bus at auction for about €5.000 (the advantage of this bus was that it has a flat floor; no steps at the back).
Click/tap here for details of how they built the bus-based repair café
Here’s how they spent the rest of the budget:
- €500 on materials (they mostly used recycled materials e.g.: old cabinet doors to make tables)
- €800 on repairs (e.g. to the engine)
- €1300 on insurance
- €300 on taxes
- €2000 on a custom paint job
- €200 on licenses (they reclassified the bus as an ‘office vehicle’ so that no-one needed to get a bus driving license and could just use a truck license. But this means that it can’t be driven with passengers)
They removed most of the seats, built folding tables, workbenches, storage units and a sewing corner. They also installed power outlets, which use a transformer to provide mains power (either by plugging into an external power source or from the bus’s own batteries.
See some pictures of the bus on their Facebook page.
Oda shared some of the learnings they’ve made since launching the bus earlier this year:
On the plus side  |
On the down side  |
|---|---|
| The bus has received lots of media attention and draws in passers-by. | It’s hard to find parking |
| Being mobile allows them to visit places they wouldn’t be able to reach normally, such as parks and rural communities | It’s hard to find drivers |
| They don’t have to worry about finding a permanent home | It was a lot of work to build |
| It’s still a lot of work to organise events (they usually rely on visiting another existing network | |
| taxes, licenses and maintenance are annual costs (around €2000/year) |
Ironically, as a result of all the extra publicity they’ve received, a local library that’s moving out of it’s current building has now offered them a permanent space of their own. Oda is now considering lending the bus to the German Repair Café network, who could use it to help new groups get started in other parts of the country.
@Derek_sayers & @Repair_Cafe_Glasgow - you mentioned being interested in creating a mobile repair café. Perhaps this post will interest you!
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