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Bike stolen from Columbus coffee shop found thanks to community support

Jennings Java had its bike stolen on Tuesday. The bike was returned less than two days later after the community helped.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A local coffee business had its bike stolen on Tuesday but returned just a couple of days later.

Jennings Java started in 2016 as a wholesale coffee business. But in 2020, the business hit a major roadblock, when most of its clients had to shut down.

“We essentially were looking at each other and saying ‘What are we going to do?’ ‘We have to do something,’” said co-founder AJ Kazmierczak.

Their answer was doing deliveries on a fluorescent orange bicycle.

“That bike in 2020 is essentially what saved us because of the fact that we went with that bright color, because of the fact that people came to know us as the coffee guys that rode it around and delivered only on bicycle,” said Kazmierczak.

Kazmierczak says the delivery service had never been better until the bike was stolen on Tuesday. But that's when the community it helped create came into play.

“We're seeing in real-time the good that can come from social media,” said Kazmierczak.

The business shared the missing bike on social media, and they say the community support left them speechless, as many commented and shared their posts.

“We actually had someone reach out via Facebook message and said ‘hey, pretty sure I'm looking at your bike right now,’” said Kazmierczak.

The bike was spotted in the Westgate area. Kazmierczak followed the person riding the bike Friday morning and called the police.

“The bike is back and it's directly because of the community that we've built up and the people that we get to interact with on a daily basis,” he said.

Kazmierczak says they’ve recently invested in a new lock. No one was arrested in this incident; the co-owners of Jennings Java just say they were happy to get their bike back.

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