This Off-the-Grid Arkansas Coffee Shop is Truly Grounds for Adventure

Airship may be tucked amongst the trees, but it's emblematic of something much bigger happening across Bentonville.

It looks like an open-air Brutalist spaceship, has no Wi-Fi, and can only be accessed by foot or bike path. It also serves some of the best espresso in town.

It is Airship Coffee, a coffee shop, restaurant and beer bar tucked away on the Applegate Trail in Bentonville, Arkansas’s Coler Bike Preserve. With just three walls and designed to fit into its surroundings, Airship Coffee might catch you off guard. But for those looking to reconnect with their surroundings—with a strong caffeine kick— it’s a welcome surprise. Here, with 5,000 square feet of indoor-outdoor space, including swings and a rooftop patio, you have no choice but to put down your phone and commune with nature and, sure, if you want, the people around you. 

There are so many lenses through which to understand a city. If you’re new to Bentonville, this spaceship—sorry, Airship— encompasses two of its major selling points. The local mini-chain started roasting beans in 2008 (in a popcorn popper out of the owners’ garage), opened its first location in 2018, and today makes some of the most unique coffee concoctions in town, in a region that’s steadily becoming known for its excellent coffee shops. 

And then there's the big one: biking. In the past two decades, Bentonville began leaning into its Ozarks environs in earnest and created an abundance of easily accessible bike paths and trails both for competition and recreation. Paved city paths connect to world-class mountain biking trails, slicing past rocky outcrops, through forests, ravines, and creeks and up to bluff overlooks. On a backwoods walk (sorry, I’m not a biker) I witnessed both adventurous athletes whipping while catching air, and families carefully cycling in packs.

Slaughter Pen, Coler Mountain Bike Preserve, and the Back 40 Trail System are the most popular in the area. Completed in 2020, in its 300 acres Coler includes over 20 miles of progressive built trail for every skill level, plus camping and recreational activities. And when bikers, campers, and paved path strollers are in need of refreshment, they can visit their woodland coffee shop. Airship may be tucked amongst the trees, but it's emblematic of something much bigger happening across Bentonville.

It wasn’t always like this. Growing up in Arkansas, Bentonville wasn't exactly a destination. You didn’t go to Bentonville to sip cortados or bomb down mountain bike trails—you went there for cheap shampoo and maybe a job at the Walmart headquarters if you were ambitious. Bentonville was the place where Sam Walton first opened Walton's 5 & 10 and, through grit and down home sensibility, grew it into a billion dollar industry. When I moved to New York, one of the biggest culture adjustments was the fact that in the Big Apple there are zero Walmarts to speak of. (And they call themselves a city??)

Not surprisingly, the mountain biking transformation came with backing from the Walton family, particularly Tom Walton, who saw the outdoor infrastructure as a way to diversify the city’s identity. Walk through downtown Bentonville today and you’ll see more than just bikes strapped to Subarus, you’ll find slick little only-in-Arkansas flourishes that nod to a biking lifestyle. My hotel, the Motto by Hilton (which incidentally also houses an excellent coffee shop), has a bike storage and valet. My window overlooks the Ledger Building, the country’s first “bikeable building,” a co-working space with six stories of bike ramp wrapping the exterior. Buy an electric bike in Bentonville and there’s a city-funded rebate program for residents up to a whopping $1,300. 

Today Bentonville has even dubbed itself “Mountain Biking Capital of the World”—and it seems to be catching on. The city’s allure has spread to the professional circuit, with events like The Life Time Grand Prix, and the more locally-focused Bentonville Bike Fest, founded by pro rider Kenny Belaey. This once overlooked destination has, in the last few years, increased its population by 14 percent. The outdoors were a major draw for the 66,000 digital nomads and entrepreneurs who applied to the Northwest Arkansas ‘Life Works Here’ relocation program, which offered cash incentives to remote workers. The program has ended, but the influx helped reshape the city.

All of that growth and transformation, and yet, for all its high-speed trails and tech-connected residents, one of the city’s most unique, memorable spots is a place where you can’t log in, check email, or upload a Strava ride.

You probably won’t find many digital nomads working from Airship at Coler. Because, yeah—the whole no Wi-Fi thing.

And that’s kind of the point.