Most motorcyclists have heard of the Ace Cafe; the London restaurant has gone from a simple roadside greasy spoon to a biker’s mecca, as the centre of cafe racer culture, going back for decades.
Now, the Ace Cafe is branching out, opening an overseas location. Management planning to open a second Ace Cafe (with restaurant and bar) in Orlando, Florida. They’ve signed lease paperwork, and they hope to open the location within a year.
The Orlando location will be much larger than the original UK cafe. The Florida location will have 16,000 square feet of space, covering three acres. Presumably, that includes the parking lots. Big parking spaces will be important, as the business plan is likely to likely host hot rod gatherings and custom bike shows at new cafe on a regular basis.
While Florida might not seem like a great place for a restaurant themed around high performance and speed, the move is actually pretty canny, for two reasons. One, at this point in history, the Ace is more about nostalgia than about carving corners, and there are plenty of vintage vehicles in Florida (with vintage owners) who will be interested. Two, the AIMExpo is returning to Orlando this year, and you can bet the Ace figures on a lot of action due to that show; if business continues to improve, Orlando could become a hotspot on the American motorcycle scene, unlikely as that initially seems.
So umm…why are there no bikes in the picture?
That’s an artist’s rendering. Maybe he had an anti-bike agenda?