Holding a Bike Breakfast event can be a fun and enjoyable way to promote bike riding. Celebration events are a great way to make those taking part feel valued for riding or walking and besides, who doesn’t love a free breakfast?
Try and encourage your novice and experienced riders to mingle and share information and tips. You could run a ‘Bike Buddy’ initiative to give novice riders an opportunity to ride with a more experienced rider to gain confidence in the lead up to the event.
A few things that can spruce up any bike event are Valet Bike Parking and having a qualified bike mechanic on hand.
Valet parking really offers riders the red carpet treatment. It also means that the bikes are securely and neatly stored.
Bike mechanics can demonstrate basic maintenance, service bikes on the day and provide a diagnostic service. You may be able to source a bike mechanic from your local bike store. Alternatively, there are a number of providers in Perth who will provide this service for a fee.
The following sections outline how to make the most of your Bike Breakfast, whether you are school or workplace champion or a local government officer.
School Champions
Consider the reason behind your event and let this shape the planning. You may want to reward teachers and students who ride or walk to school calling for a small, more personal event. However, if you wish to motivate the whole school community to ride, scoot or walk - a larger scale breakfast is necessary.
You might want to hold your event on a significant date in the calendar such as National Ride2School Day, Bike Week or Walk to School Day. Benefits of linking your event to one of these include:
- Access to rewards or grants
- Opportunities for cross promotion of national events to your local action
- Opportunities to make the breakfast fun for kids and adults
- Lots of opportunities to take photos and video for your champions to upload to your stories!
The best events are a team effort, so figure out who can help you. This might involve rounding up parent volunteers, securing funding or enlisting others to promote your event at local shops and community centres.
For Workplaces
It’s important to first decide what you are trying to achieve and let this shape the event. You may want to reward staff that ride or walk to work and provide them with some information, in which case a small scale workplace breakfast would be suitable.
Alternatively, a larger scale event would be more suitable if you wanted to create a greater impact and benefit from funding by running a combined event with other workplaces in the same building or nearby.
You may wish to hold your event on a significant date in the cycling calendar such as National Ride2Work Day, Bike Week, or even the Tour de France. Benefits include:
- Access to rewards or grants
- Opportunities for cross promotion
- People being primed to participate
For Local Government Officers
Over the years, we have found that Local Governments can play a major role in promoting bike riding in the community by supporting bike to work breakfasts. These events can take place in a range of settings from lunch rooms to city squares. It's up to you as organiser to figure out which venue best suits your event, both for you as the organiser and more importantly, for your participants.
Successful breakfast events led by Local Government include:
- The City of Subiaco’s community focused breakfasts, which is at a local café near the main cycling commuter path into the city.
- The City of Melville’s event, which is conducted on the side of one of their most popular cycling routes.
In both cases organisers have carefully considered their needs and chosen locations that are easily accessible by bike.
Get the wheels moving on your next bike breakfast event! Feel free to contact us for support and information.
Community Bike Breakfast during Bike Week