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JR Brester has owned Sonny’s Bike Shop since 2004. The store, which was opened by and named after his father, is celebrating 50 years of service this October. Although there have been changes, obstacles and tragedies along the way, Brester and his store have persevered throughout the decades.
The biking world has changed significantly since Sonny Brester opened his eponymous Sonny’s Bike Shop in October 1972.
The store has changed locations, now residing at 1717 East Overland Dr. in Scottsbluff. New races have popped up, and bikes are noticeably different and more high-tech.
What hasn’t changed is the family running the store: Sonny’s son, JR Brester, now owns it. He runs it with the help of his own son, Justin.
JR has worked at the store for more than 40 of its 50 years. He helped out as a teen and took over full-time in 2004 when his dad retired.
“I wouldn’t say it was really overly successful until the late 1970’s,” he said. “When I was in high school, we saw it really be self-sustaining.”
Sonny Brester had been working at a service station but wanted to run a shop of his own. A Navy veteran and mechanic by trade, he and his wife Colleen had returned to Scottsbluff after years away when his son said he got ‘a wild (idea)’ and decided to open up the bicycle shop.
Justin Brester works on a bike at Sonny’s Bike Shop on Monday, Oct. 3. Justin is the third generation of Bresters to work at the shop after his father and grandparents. He’s been helping out full-time for the last five years.
Shortly afterward, the OPEC gas crisis occurred, and many people could no longer afford to drive, so they turned to a different mode of transportation.
“The gas crisis, I think, helped the most, because people, at that time, really did react to it and tried to change their lifestyles and bike to work,” JR said. “(Sonny and Colleen) pretty much sold every (bike) they could get their hands on. For a while, they even had two stores. My dad, he was a hard worker.”
Colleen worked for a bank, and Sonny worked at the nearby sugar factory when sales were slow in the winter. They, and later their son, soon operated the bike shop all year long.
After decades of working at the store, Sonny passed away from cancer in 2012.
JR Brester admires a 1981 P.K. Ripper, one of several vintage bikes at Sonny's Bike Shop. Many of the bikes at Brester's store are retro and vintage. These are often for display, including his father's 1990s racer.
“Our relationship is a lot different from mine with my father. My dad was old-school … we worked together, that’s it,” JR said.
When he was diagnosed with cancer, he became friendlier.
“… He got ten good years, and we became friends finally … I wanted to be more open with my kids — with dad I was always competing with him.”
JR always bounces ideas off of Justin, and Justin teaches him new things such as setting up gift cards and electronic transactions for the store.
“I used to be (Justin) and my dad was the one holding back. Now I’m the one, and (Justin) absorbs it like a sponge so that’s a good thing,” JR said.
Justin Reinmuth, a longtime customer of Sonny’s Bike Shop, looks over available products at the store. Like many regulars, he’s been shopping there since he was a kid.
It’s especially good to be more technologically savvy because of how drastically the bikes themselves have changed over the years.
“They’re like cellphones … we have wireless drive trains, it’s all Bluetooth, there’s no cables. E-bikes have gone nuts; that’s been a really big thing for us,” JR said.
Aside from selling bikes, Sonny’s also works to repair and restore them. Nowadays, even that requires technological know-how. JR and Justin can fine-tune the gears on an electronic bike through their phones.
Some bikes are sold to racers, some to kids, and some are for collectors. Over the years, the store has acquired a devoted clientele.
“It’s a product. It continues to change and evolve. There are different needs, but the desirability is still there,” JR said.
Justin Brester’s work at the shop coincided with his increased interest in biking. He played football in college but was injured, and part of his rehab involved using exercise bikes.
“Pretty soon he was bored so he started riding outdoors. I get a text from him before class and he’s riding up to the South Dakota state line to take pictures, so his interest really took off and now he’s a bike addict too, so his collection is starting to grow,” JR said.
Justin has done races up to 150 miles and has a better understanding of bikes than he did when he first started working at the family shop five years ago.
Just like his father, he grew up around the shop. He said he still remembers his grandfather ribbing him and his brother for taking bikes from the store to ride around the back lot.
“It’s bigger than me and my dad … everybody knows we’ve been around forever. Most of the time, people are like, ‘Oh, I got my first bike from Sonny’s when I was a kid’ no matter what the venue is or why they’re talking to me,” Justin explained.
The last two years have been the hardest in the store’s history, JR said. The coronavirus pandemic and recent inventory shortages have made acquiring inventory much more difficult than before.
“We’re selling to third generations of families … when COVID hit, we were selling bikes to Kansas City, Rapid City, Denver, Casper.”
People who live in town, and have gone to Sonny’s for decades, recommended the store for their out-of-town children looking for specific products.
The Bresters just happened to have plenty of what they needed, but the store still suffered hardships like any other.
“The first part of COVID, when they shut down the world, I had just signed on with another company and we had all our spring orders in stock … all of a sudden, they shut us down. We went ten days and we didn’t turn $100,” JR said. “I didn’t sleep. We couldn’t eat this stuff. We didn’t know what we were going to do. Then all of a sudden people just got stir-crazy, I guess, and they just had to get out. We sold an entire year’s worth of inventory in three months.”
They weren’t able to replace their inventory, so it ended up being just a normal year for sales. Those few months in 2020 were record-setters, though.
The family has also suffered personal tragedies since that time. JR’s mom Colleen had always been a familiar, friendly face among customers at the store. She died in July 2021 at age 79.
Four months later, JR’s daughter Sydnee was killed in a plane crash. She was just 19 years old.
“I closed,” JR said. “I didn’t even know if I would open back up. I threw it in his (Justin’s) lap and said, ‘Decisions are going to be based on you from here on out. What are we going to do?’ And he said, ‘We’ve got to make 50.’”
So, after a few weeks for the family to process their grief, Sonny’s Bike Shop reopened.
“It’s good that I had something to go to, that I had to go to, to face the responsibility of it,” JR said. “On some days I said, ‘I don’t want to be here,’ but there’s a healing process. The customer base seems to help that.”
Customers like Justin Reinmuth of Gering have been shopping at Sonny’s since they were kids. Reinmuth is a collector and searches for retro and vintage BMX bikes at the store.
“They (the Bresters) are knowledgeable; they know everything. If you can’t find something, they’ll find it for you,” Reinmuth said.
Now that the pandemic has waned, Sonny’s is turning the corner on inventory. More products are becoming available. JR said he and Justin just have to mind their Ps and Qs, because a small mistake could prove costly.
Sometimes, JR added, customers have asked them to sell cheaper brands even if they are lower quality.
“I can’t do it. People expect more from us,” he said.
JR said his wife had asked him to take more days off. But in the Scottsbluff area, people are into biking whenever the temperatures are even mildly warm.
“I’m a bike farmer. You don’t get a second chance. When they’re here, you’ve got to take it,” JR said. “Last year just taught me that some things are more important. It’s kind of a grey area; I’m trying to be more mindful of my family and take care of some things that way, and still manage a business.”
For the store’s golden anniversary, Justin Brester’s college roommate designed a special 50th anniversary logo as well as a modified version of one of the store’s original logos.
This modified logo features a man and woman riding a bicycle, with a dog running alongside — a commemoration of Sonny, Colleen and the many store dogs who’ve spent time at Sonny’s. It also features a butterfly with the initials SAB marked inside in memory of Sydnee.
To JR, having the store serve the community for as long as it as is hard to comprehend.
“I never would’ve guessed we’d do that,” he said. “But the landscape has changed, and we’re into it. We’re still doing OK.”
It’s all in good fun and we’ve been assured the bears don't mind at all. Buzz60’s Tony Spitz has the details.
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Christopher Borro is a reporter at the Star-Herald. He can be reached by email at christopher.borro@starherald.com.
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JR Brester has owned Sonny’s Bike Shop since 2004. The store, which was opened by and named after his father, is celebrating 50 years of service this October. Although there have been changes, obstacles and tragedies along the way, Brester and his store have persevered throughout the decades.
Justin Brester works on a bike at Sonny’s Bike Shop on Monday, Oct. 3. Justin is the third generation of Bresters to work at the shop after his father and grandparents. He’s been helping out full-time for the last five years.
JR Brester admires a 1981 P.K. Ripper, one of several vintage bikes at Sonny's Bike Shop. Many of the bikes at Brester's store are retro and vintage. These are often for display, including his father's 1990s racer.
Justin Reinmuth, a longtime customer of Sonny’s Bike Shop, looks over available products at the store. Like many regulars, he’s been shopping there since he was a kid.
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