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FeedLedo’s and the shuttle bus
“Your chariot is here,” my husband said, as he peered into the darkness from our front window and saw the 12-passenger bus idling outside.
I wasn’t headed to the airport, a hotel, our car dealer’s service bay or any other business that typically runs a mini-bus shuttle service for customers. It was 10 pm on a Thursday night and I was dressed for a night on the town at Ledo’s Lounge.
Ledo’s, 2608 N. High St., has been offering the free Ledo’s Shuttle since May. It is owner Steve Niswonger’s latest effort to draw patrons to his bar tucked between Hudson and Dodridge streets just north of Ohio State University.
It’s not the first shuttle service trying to capture the college market. But it’s unique in that a party of five riders—give or take—is guaranteed door-to-door pickup and delivery beyond the normal street-side stops for students. The ridership range is north to Rt. 161, south to the Arena District, east to Bexley and west to Grandview. (The shuttle makes its runs Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 10 pm until closing, with a 3 am cutoff time.)
“You don’t have to go to a stop,” Niswonger says. “We’ll come get you and take you right back home.”
Niswonger has had plenty of chances to learn from other Columbus bar drop-off services, including the Park Street Shuttle, which in 2007 started to cart OSU students from the campus 7-Eleven to the Park Street bars, and COTA’s No. 21 night bus. He also once partnered with the owners of now-defunct Sloopy’s, formerly across the street from Ledo’s, to operate that bar’s bus, but a lack of coordination and customer service did more harm than good, Niswonger says.
So he opted to go it alone; he invested $4,000 and a trip to Long Island, New York, where he picked up the bus in the spring. He initially made just a few changes—adding a couch in the back and adorning it with Ledo’s stickers, though he plans to invest in more seats and an elaborate paint job before OSU is back in session.
Niswonger’s main goal is bringing more patrons from their homes to his establishment’s front door and to help ensure his customers’ safe passage home after a night of, say, darts and drinks.
The bus also serves, Niswonger has found, as a great form of mobile advertising, and High Street travelers have begun taking notice.
“Will that bus pick you up and bring you here?” asks Anthony Poullet, who lives north of Graceland and was outside Ledo’s when I arrived at the bar that Thursday in July. “That’s great! I don’t want to be drinking and driving. And it would be good for my gas mileage. It’d be great to ride it with a group of friends—the more the merrier.”
