Tour de Croissant

Creating community with pastries

Bikes and pastries go together, with coffee. I ride a lot, and croissants are my favorite, and specifically plain ones. I saw an “unmet need” for a series of rides that ended at different bakeries, with voting at the end to pick favorites. I wanted to find out if we were eating the best of the best. And I wanted to bring people together at local businesses.

I gathered friends from Fatcake Club and the San Francisco Cycling Club to plan and promote, and we devised a stage race format (like the Tour de France), with a route and bakery for each stage. In 2017 we had 8 stages, and in 2018 and 2019 we swelled to 10. At the end of each tour, we voted on the best.

Arsicault swept most of the categories all three years, no surprise. But we uncovered new favorites too, like Jane the Bakery, Parkside, Neighbor Bakehouse, Fournee and B Patisserie, all locally-owned, that I and many others still go to regularly today.

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