Marquette’s soundscape is usually built from chatter, car engines and church bells — but every so often, there’s the pumping and hissing of a nitro cold brew machine on wheels.
That’s the Recovery at Marquette coffee bike, which is celebrating its first birthday on Sept. 23. Through the mobile cold brew stand, the program has spent the past year giving out free coffee to Marquette students, faculty and staff. The giveaways serve as an opportunity to promote the program, which supports students and community members in their recoveries from substance use.
Since its campus debut in September 2024, the Ferla bike has been used to give away nearly 5,000 cups of coffee, complemented by milk — dairy or vegan — and self-serve syrups. Even with students away for the summer, the bike was still on campus during SPARK orientation events to welcome the next wave of Golden Eagles.
“Students love it,” Timothy Rabolt, director of Recovery at Marquette, said. “It’s getting more traction [as] something on campus. We’ll get students that come out and then they’ll call their roommate and be like, ‘The bike is back.’”
In the winter, the bike goes into hibernation. But its spirit stayed alive in February 2025 by inspiring the Pink Pony Cafe, where the recovery program served coffee out of its third-floor space at Wellness + Helfaer Recreation. With an estimated 150 people in attendance, the event will make a return in 2026, Rabolt said.
“You can actually see this joy when [students] realize they can get this free cup, and they’re having fun crafting it on their own,” Rabolt said. “Just making people’s day better and that outward expression of joy and excitement, I think that’s probably the best compliment that we get around what we’re doing.”
For those stopping by for a treat at the bike, it’s not just a grab-and-go system. Students wait in line before their turn at the tap, and Recovery at Marquette hopes they will spend the interval time reading signs and scanning QR codes with information about the program.
Though some inevitably spend the time on their phones, the messaging remains for patrons to make a mental bookmark.
“It’s a good seed to plant because you never know when someone might need us,” Rachael Halby, a graduate student and program assistant, said.
Finally, the cup of nitro cold brew — with a choice of milk — is filled and handed over, complete with a handwritten positive message lining the plastic. With messages like “progress, not perfection,” each cup is a reminder that no one is alone in recovery, a message the program often emphasizes.
“We get a lot of alumni that come by, and for the bike and our program, they always say that they wish that was around when they were on campus,” Hilda Valencia, a graduate student and program assistant, said.
The celebration of the coffee bike’s anniversary in September also falls within National Recovery Month, a nationwide effort to support those in recovery and the programs they lean on.
That’s why Recovery at Marquette partnered with The Phoenix, a local recovery center chapter, to host Milwaukee’s “Largest Sober Tailgate” before the Milwaukee Brewers’ MKE Recovery Night game Sept. 16. The alcohol-free event at Helfaer Field included a kickball game, free buffet and music. Over 500 people attended the tailgate while Recovery at Marquette gave away 1,000 tickets to the game — a 9-2 Brewers win.
“It was just a good energy,” Michael Diaz, program assistant, said. “We would call it fellowship; you’re able to connect with people who you otherwise probably would never have met, and you have something immediately in common that’s pretty profound.”
To close out National Recovery Month, Recovery at Marquette will host the Recovery Day Fair on Sept. 30, featuring food trucks, games and, of course, the coffee bike.
With 5,000 cups of coffee, 1,000 baseball tickets and hundreds of people at events, Recovery at Marquette is expanding its scope every day. But recovery will never be a numbers game — it’s a search for the program to build the deepest connections that it can.
“It’s way more about depth than it is how wide a reach it’s [going to] be,” Rabolt said. “Because even just transforming and saving one life is worth it.”
And for some of those relationships, it all starts with the pump and hiss of a nitro cold brew machine.
This story was written by Lance Schulteis. He can be reached at [email protected].
