New Belgium’s Tour de Fat Explained by Dallas Byerley, Beer Ranger

New Belgium’s Tour de Fat came to an end this past weekend. The bike parade and festival tour wrapped up in Austin, TX Saturday after completing its inaugural stop in Los Angeles a week ago. The event was free to enter and featured a little beer, a little music, and a little oddball fun targeted to the biking community all for a good cause. We talked to New Belgium’s Los Angeles Beer Ranger Dallas Byerley (pictured right) about the ins and outs of the festival and how it came to be.

It’s a Celebration

The Tour de Fat, aptly named after New Belgium’s flagship beer Fat Tire, is a traveling celebration of the biking community that visits different major cities including Los Angeles, Austin, Portland, Seattle, Chicago and more. The event begins with a “not anti-car but pro-bike” parade through the city with costumed attendees on decorated bikes. After the parade, there’s a festival with New Belgium beers, food, live music, and numerous sideshows.

The event is free to attend with only food and beverage costing bucks. In Los Angeles, Dallas explained that “all the beer profits and all the t-shirt sales are going to three specific nonprofit organizations — the L.A. County Bike Coalition, the Bicycle Kitchen and C.I.C.L.E. Most of the food profits are going right back into these organizations.”

What is this Fatness?

If you weren’t exactly sure what to expect of the Tour de Fat, you weren’t alone. Describing the event to people that haven’t seen it before is a little tough. “I fielded multiple phone calls about ‘What exactly is the Tour de Fat?’ and I tried to tell people it’s a ballyhoo of bikes and beer, it’s carnival, it’s sideshow magic, it’s festival, it’s concert, it’s beer, and people still don’t really get it. You have to come and experience it for yourself. It grows grassroots style. It’s a party in a park with people and good beers,” Dallas explained.

From a Basement to a Brewery

New Belgium is notorious for taking a grassroots approach to growing their business and brand. “We started out of a couple’s basement where they were sharing 22 oz. of Fat Tire and a beer called Abbey just off their porch to friends. People thought their beer was good and encouraged Jeff and Kim to take it to the next level.  Kim was our first sales woman and she was delivering kegs to one of our very first draft accounts in the back of her old beat up station wagon, pulling up right next to giant Budweiser trucks. She’d look at these massive trucks with hundreds of kegs inside and go, “What am I thinking? Am I out of my mind?” But Fat Tire grew out of one basement. We got one draft account and one became two, two became four, eight, sixteen — we spread from Colorado to Arizona, beer to beer, bladder to bladder!

“We recognize our history, we recognize that the bicycle was extraordinarily important to one man with an idea while on a bicycle in Belgium back in the late 80s so this is how we pay it back and pay it forward. The Tour de Fat started as a small, humble celebration of the bicycle in Fort Collins, CO. Beer was there, as was an opportunity for us to tell folks who we were as a company. Obviously, it was an opportunity for folks to sample the beer, but it was also an opportunity for us to raise some money to give back to non-profit bicycle related entities. The bicycle is that deep for us.”

L.A. Grows Up

We can’t wait for next year’s tour. Attendees and even our friends on Twitter agreed it was like a more innocent, mini-Coachella! The educational and inspirational event drew a crowd of around 2,000 people to the Los Angeles Historic State Park. Next year it may be at a different venue, like Long Beach or the west side.

We wondered why Tour de Fat hadn’t come to Los Angeles sooner and Dallas had this to say; “L.A. is still a maturing market. We haven’t had our beer out here all that long — somewhere between 4 and 5 years — so we had to justify our case to have a Tour de Fat based on the success of the brand and the support of the bicycle community. It just takes time to build the bridges, find the right organization and get the ball rolling but we’re here!” Amen.

Check out more photos in New Belgium Brewing’s Tour de Fat Rides Into Los Angeles State Historic Park [PHOTOS]

Additional information:
http://www.newbelgium.com/events/tour-de-fat.aspx

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