Bright Angel Bicycles: Peddling pedals at the Grand Canyon
August 16, 2015
 EMERY COWAN Sun Staff Reporter

The company names that dominate the operating contracts at Grand Canyon National Park are longtime behemoths in the concessionaire business. Xanterra, Delaware North and Paul Revere have operated for years at the park, building up an established system of business that past lawsuits have proved is hard to budge.
But there’s one name that is a relative newcomer at the canyon: Bright Angel Bicycles, a bicycle tour and rental business started by two former river guides from Flagstaff.

The business's goal is to give people a different way to see the canyon, said Wes Neal, one of the company’s founders.
“We wanted to build an experience where you don't drive up to the rim -- it’s more of an on-foot approach,” Neal said. “This helps initiate more of a nature experience.”

So far, the business seems to be onto something. This spring, Bright Angel passed the five-year mark and has seen a more than four-fold growth in ridership since it opened, Neal said.

It's not a bad start for a venture that started on a shoestring budget with founders that had little experience in the business world.
Wes Neal and Kyle George, who were both former river guides in the Grand Canyon, started Bright Angel Bicycles in 2010 along with help from Neal’s father, Ralph Neal. Getting the contract at the national park wasn’t easy though. The National Park Service initially rejected Neal's proposal of a bicycle rental shop after he first approached the agency in 2008. But Neal persisted, calling the National Park Service every few months and pressing them about the concept. Finally, one day in 2009, the Park Service called him to discuss the idea in earnest.

Later that year, the government put the bike shop contract up for bid. Bright Angel Bicycles competed with four other companies and won the initial five-month contract that began in May 2010. The business started out in a 28-square-foot kiosk on the South Rim with a stock of 75 bikes. The owners had one year to prove it could work.

They did, and won the contract the next year, too. Then in 2012, the National Park Service offered up a 10-year contract to run a bicycle rental shop out of a newly constructed building that included a cafe. Food service wasn’t part of Bright Angel's business plan, Neal said, but they had no choice.

To their surprise, Bright Angel won the contract again.
“By all rights we as a small family-owned business shouldn't have been awarded a big contract like that,” Neal said. “We were two guys without a business background, but we had a strong knowledge of Grand Canyon, a strong knowledge of the visitor and the best ways to engage the visitor. It was the right opportunity at the right time.”

That opportunity also comes with a unique set of challenges. Transporting food into such a rural location can be logistically difficult, as can working with the Park Service to provide housing for a staff that reaches 30 in the summertime, Neal said. Like the canyon’s other concessionaires, Bright Angel Bicycles has to pay a portion of profits to the Park Service as a franchise fee and has to work within the constraints of a federal bureaucracy.

But the business is doing well, with a stock of 270 bikes and an offering that includes three tours a day, bike rentals and a bike shuttle along the South Rim. Bright Angel is also operating a bustling cafe that offers sandwiches, snacks and coffee and now accounts for 65 percent of total business.

Throughout the process, Neal said he found a career, something he wasn’t sure how to go about doing when his river-guiding days started to come to an end.

It may be challenging, but Neal said he has no doubt about whether he would do it all over again.
“Absolutely,” he said

Bright Angel Bicycles
Address: 10 S. Entrance Road, Grand Canyon Village
Phone: (928) 638-3055
Website: bikegrandcanyon.com