The gSnails

Vancouver’s first permanent pedal-power café installation.

Role: Concept originator, grant lead, and design collaborator
Partner: eatART / gBikes (engineering & fabrication)
Location: Wilder Snail, 799 Keefer Street, Strathcona, Vancouver
Year: 2013/2014

Four white pedal-powered stools in a row inside the Wilder Snail café — The four gSnails stools installed at the Wilder Snail, Strathcona — note the snail spiral on each flywheel housing. Photo: eatART / gBikes

The idea

I wanted the Wilder Snail to do more than sell good coffee and honest groceries, I wanted the room itself to teach something. What if the act of sitting down to work on your laptop could make your relationship to energy visible? Not as a lecture, but as a feeling in your legs.

That question became the gSnails: a row of four electricity-generating stools where customers pedal to power their own devices. Plug in a laptop or a phone charger, start pedalling, and an integrated display shows you exactly how your effort maps to what you’re consuming. Surplus charge flows down to a battery bank below the shop. It’s off-grid power you can taste in your next espresso.

Bringing it to life

I brought the concept to eatART’s gBikes — the Vancouver collective behind a string of human-powered kinetic projects — and we partnered to turn a rough idea into a working, permanent fixture. It became gBikes’ first permanent installation. Their engineering team, led by Curtis Perrin, handled the fabrication: water-cut parts, welded frames, and a custom computer system for real-time energy feedback. I secured the project funding through the LiveSmart BC: Small Business Champion Program and shaped the design brief around the realities of a working café — it had to be stylish, durable, and inviting enough that a stranger would climb on without being asked.

We revealed the finished stools to the neighbourhood at an open house in spring 2013.

Close view of a gSnails stool with its wooden pedal and snail-shell flywheel inside the café — An early look at the install — flywheel housings, hand-finished wooden pedals, and the snail motif throughout. Photo: Scout Magazine (2013)

The numbers

4 pedal-powered stools
~100 W average output per rider
250 W peak output per rider
Real-time energy production / consumption display
Surplus stored to an on-site battery bank

Reception and afterlife

The gSnails became a small landmark in Strathcona and a genuine conversation-starter about energy awareness — neighbours, regulars, and visiting press all gravitated to them. Beyond the café, the stools travelled to eatART events around the city, including the Vancouver Art Gallery’s Power’s the VAG series, the East-Side Culture Crawl, and the eatART Transit Party, where former Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson took a turn in the saddle. Since 2018 they’ve found a second life at a school in Surrey, BC, still doing what they were built to do: making the cost of a kilowatt something you can feel.

A single gSnails stool at an outdoor eatART event, a rider relaxing in a leather chair beside it — Out on the road — a gSnail at one of eatART’s city events. Photo: eatART / gBikes

What I took from it

The gSnails taught me that the most persuasive sustainability tools aren’t screens full of statistics — they’re objects that invite participation and put the feedback loop right under your own two feet. That principle has shaped how I approach every project since.

Engineering and fabrication by eatART / gBikes. Project funded in part by the LiveSmart BC: Small Business Champion Program. Photography credited above to Scout Magazine and eatART / gBikes; the project was also documented in the café by Angie Holubowich for Daily Hive (2014).