Sweet treats await for the roadside spectator.
Composite image: Gruber Images (the three bicycle cyclists) and Ralston Smith/Unsplash (the two M&M figurines).
Sure, the 2025 season is still going, and sure, the 2026 Tour de France is half an autumn, all of a winter, a full spring and a bit of summer away. But does that mean the good people behind the Tour, Amaury Sports Organisation, can take the foot off the gas, even for a second? It does not. That is not how a commercial juggernaut is made.
To guarantee the continued success of the sport’s biggest event, the organisation’s commercial department must always, always be hustling. TV rights: sell ‘em. Official timepiece: sell it. Diabolical coffee? SELL IT. Everything is an opportunity, because everything is a potential activation. And when even the parts of the Tour that aren’t brazenly commercial are for sale, then it goes without saying that there are endless opportunities in the bits that are – like the Tour de France caravan, a huge rolling promotional opportunity for the brands that pay many Euros to be involved.
How to get the most out of your Tour de France caravan experience
Everything you need to know (and probably some things you don’t) about the Tour de France’s support act.
First introduced in 1930, the caravan has become a crucial part of the Tour de France – not just financially, but for the fans, too. Every summer, the roadsides of the country teem with spectators waiting for a chance to grab trinkets from the caravan convoy – a line of a hundred or so elaborately decorated vehicles with hungover youth standing on them, throwing cheap bucket hats and ugly keyrings to an insatiable public.
The composition of the Tour caravan is a shifting thing: stalwarts like (disgusting, withered) sausage brand Cochonou have been involved for years, while others come and go. Some of those departures are mourned by aficionados (and by ‘aficionados’, I mean ‘me’; you are missed, Génération Pêche). Others barely make a ripple, such is the paucity of their wares, the blandness of their vehicles, or the lack of charisma of their hungover youths.
Recent years, meanwhile, have seen the arrival of Tourtel (a non-alcoholic, fruit-flavoured beer, which is fine if you are very thirsty and don’t mind drinking something that looks like it was siphoned from a fizzy creek), La Vache qui rit/The Laughing Cow cheese (who don’t throw cheese, but do have some nice hats and tote bags), and Orangina (a balm for the soul). Also, there’s the utterly enchanting Panzani pesto trucks.
Tell us your secrets, Tour de France pesto truck
A gruelling search for the best smell at the world’s biggest bike race.
I guess what I’m saying is, it’s a whole thing. And you’ll also note that most of those brands are quite distinctly French, rather than huge multinational behemoths.
Which, in a roundabout way, brings us to today’s Very Important Caravan News.
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