In detail
A bike workshop with drop-offs by appointment, even in spring.
On the first sunny Saturday everyone pulls the bike out of the basement and wheels it to you: flat tires, dry chain, squealing brakes. The workshop fills with frames leaning on the wall and you lose track of which one goes first. Here is how you turn the seasonal rush into an orderly line of drop-offs.
Flats, tune-ups and the rest of your list
You start with two items: a thirty minute flat repair and a one hour full tune-up. Then add what you really do: derailleur adjustment, hydraulic brake bleed, tubeless setup, e-bike check. Each item has its length and riders only see times where that job fits, so a tune-up never lands in a twenty minute gap. What kind of bike it is, road, gravel, city or e-bike, and what is wrong goes in the note to the business before they confirm.
The bike stays, the drop-off is booked
A tube you swap while the rider waits; for a tune-up the bike may hang on the stand all day. The appointment sets the moment the bike enters the workshop, so ten frames do not show up the same morning. When it is done, the app sends no message by itself: you phone the rider, or add a short pickup item to your list and set the time, and the reminder reaches them like any other appointment.
Busy season and quiet months
From March to June you would open on Sundays too, in November the workshop is silent. Change hours whenever you like, mark the winter break or the week of a big ride, and nobody books on closed days. When Saturday is full, riders looking for a spot join the waiting list and hear as soon as one opens. Anyone who books and does not turn up gets marked as a no-show, and their next bookings wait for your approval. Online each rider holds at most two open appointments, within the next sixty days.
Mechanics, reminders and your Google profile
If two of you work the stands, one on regular bikes and one on e-bikes, each has a diary and only the jobs they handle, up to 12 people. The Book button on your Google Business Profile takes anyone searching for a mechanic nearby straight to your link. Reminders arrive as notifications for riders who turned them on, by default the day before and two hours before; for the rest you send one on WhatsApp with a tap, from the workshop number. Prices are hidden by default: switch them on if you want to show them.