By Peter Abraham — I recently visited Austin, Texas to participate in the Breakfast Club big monthly ride in person. It was an exceptional experience, and exceeded my expectations in many ways. But let me back up.
As part of my work over the last 20 years with brands in the bicycle, running and sports event businesses, I’ve traveled the world looking for sports brands and events that are innovative. So I have pattern recognition when it comes to interesting things in sports and community with a lot of potential. I’m constantly on the lookout for sports trends and businesses that could change the game on a global scale. Over the last 10 years or so, here are the things that were so notable to me that I dove in to start working and participating with them:
- Gravel racing
- HOKA footwear
- Canyon’s DTC business
- Bentonville, Arkansas bike infrastructure
Based on my experience this weekend, I would now add Breakfast Club to this list. Why? Because they’re building an onramp for new cyclists and an engaging community around bikes. The uninitiated might think many organizations are doing this. But road cycling in particular is surprisingly exclusive, elitist and almost hostile to new participants. At Saturday’s ride in Austin, about 900 cyclists showed up, and 30–40% of them were female. That size and the percentage of women is unheard of in virtually all of the other group rides I’ve been to. While gravel races, the Black Cycling community and NICA high school MTB racing are doing a great job with inclusion, there are generally very few initiatives trying to bring new cyclists into the sport.
Breakfast Club was founded early in the pandemic and built intentionally by ten or 12 enterprising Austin locals. In addition, there are a couple dozen ride leaders who keep the groups organized on the various rides. The BC events mostly take place in Austin, but there are also events in Dallas, with pop-up events farther afield in the works.
Here’s what Breakfast Club is doing right:
It’s free: Many cyclists love getting together with the bike community, but currently they might have to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to a gravel race to do that. How many far off events can most us afford to go to, financially or time-wise, over the course of a year? Two or three? While most cities and towns have some free, loosely organized group rides, those can be dangerous and don’t usually have a social component attached. What if you could do a fun, well organized and social ride in your own backyard every week or every month all year? The run club phenomenon, which has developed over the last 10 years, is based on the same need: free and local. With BC you get 75% of the upside of a big gravel race (only missing the bib and the actual race part) without any of the expense. BC does sell some club memberships, and they do have sponsors that help underwrite the expenses. For example the Austin Constables need to be paid for the rides they work on. I met riders who’d traveled in to Austin for the ride from Houston and Dallas, and I flew from Los Angeles. This ride really is becoming a destination event.
Safety with logistics and law enforcement support: There were dozens of ride leaders in matching kits, and 6–8 police cars that drove (two per group) in front of and behind each ability group. We ripped right through downtown Austin without stopping for red lights. And just the optics of having the police escorts makes the ride feel safer for both participants and for those driving nearby in their cars. On many other group rides, you’re zooming through traffic on busy roads with 50–100 riders and no escort vehicles. They can be incredibly dangerous. Safety is a central pillar of the BC experience. This took on particular relevance for me, because the same day I was riding with BC in Austin, a rider tragically died in a crash on one of the group rides I do in the LA area. While riding bikes can be dangerous even in the most ideal conditions, I really appreciated this emphasis on everyone’s safety in Austin.
Separate ability groups: This is really important. On the BC app (more on that below) you can sign up for one of 4–5 ability levels to ride with. If you’re a former European pro who wants a ripping workout, great, you can jump into the A group. If this is your first-ever group ride, and you just want to try it out at slow speed, no problem, join the D or E group. Everyone is welcome here. One tell tale sign of inclusivity: the number of people I saw in tennis shoes and platform pedals. There’s no shaming here because you’re not riding in the “right” gear, whatever that is.
Inclusivity and women: I spoke to some women on the ride who told me that the BC women’s group ride (called the “Babes ride”) was a key onramp for them into cycling. That allowed them to join a cycling community that was not judging them or competing with them. Once they got comfortable there, they felt confident enough to join the big monthly group ride. The number of women on this weekend’s ride was a revelation to me: In decades of doing group rides in the US and Europe, I’ve never seen anything like it. I also heard Spanish being spoken during the ride, there are LGBTQ riders, and I had lunch with Black cyclist after the ride. My experience in participation sporting events is that they are so much more fun when you feel like “everyone” is out there. There’s just more joy and more positive energy this way compared with many group rides that are mostly middle aged white males racing each other. I’m so bored with that vibe.
Digital fluency: We live in an always on, digital culture. That’s just a fact. So I appreciate when any business or organization aligns with that. Many (most?) bicycle industry businesses are run by people my age and older who grew up before the digital era took hold in about 2000. So those businesses will forever be trying to catch up from behind when it comes to digital media and marketing. I interacted with Breakfast Club through a number of channels, including Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/breakfastclubatx/), a nice website (https://breakfastclubatx.com), their very smart app (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/breakfast-club-rides-more/id6470088323), Slack and Strava (https://www.strava.com/clubs/718908). It’s not that they’re everywhere, because they’re not, but they’re meeting the cycling community where they are. Which is in these places.
Intentional social experience: The actual bike ride is only part of the Breakfast Club journey. There’s coffee before the ride, a big group hangout (hundreds of people at Central Machine Works) after and then the digital posts that go along with all of this. Most other group rides just sort of fade to black at the end and people ride off into the distance. These BC rides are events that you plan for, you bring your friends to and look forward to seeing people there socially.
A creative point of view: As someone who has spent his career building experiences and designed things, I loved the way that BC includes a look and feel with everything they do, from their Pas Normal Studios kits, to their fun shirts, to the high quality app they built. Much of this work was created by Austin-based artist Will Bryant. The spirit of his work seems to align perfectly with the BC energy. Cyclists in general like design and aesthetics, yet most bike-related brands totally ignore this. BC sees this white space as a chance to build a bigger and more passionate community. Count me in.
If the Breakfast Club team can devote the time and energy to growing this community, I believe BC could be a global movement in 3–5 years. There’s nobody else (that I’m aware of) doing anything like this. They are solving an important problem: how cyclists can ride safely and have fun as a group. I’ll try and help them get there however I can.
For more information: https://breakfastclubatx.com
