Something changed about waiting in line. In cities across Europe, the queue outside a bakery or pop-up restaurant is no longer an unfortunate side effect of popularity. It is, increasingly, the point. The line signals that something is worth wanting. It creates the scarcity that justifies the desire. And in an era when participation itself generates content, the act of waiting has become a form of social proof — visible, shareable, and deliberately produced.
How a Croissant Became a Destination
TikTok videos tagged #croissant have already surpassed 3.8 billion views this year, while “best bakeries in Paris” remains one of Google’s top food travel searches. Entire itineraries are being built around viral videos: Paris croissant trails, East London sourdough stops, Seoul’s sculptural patisseries. A single viral bun can become a destination.
This is bakery tourism — a category that barely existed a decade ago and now shapes how significant numbers of visitors plan a city visit. At Cédric Grolet’s bakery near the Louvre, tourists wait hours for a single pastry priced above €20. The allure lies not just in the taste but in the artistry and visual appeal — pastries shared and admired online long before they are tasted. The queue is part of the visit. In some cases, it is the visit.
In London, the same dynamic plays out across bakeries, sandwich shops, and noodle bars. Queueing is no longer an inconvenience suffered in order to access London’s restaurants — it is baked into the business model itself. When Mondo, a small sandwich shop, was featured on TopJaw’s Instagram in early 2025, the following day was, in the owner’s words, “mayhem” — 30 to 40-minute queues, a bouncer required for crowd management, operations overwhelmed within hours of a single post.
Visibility Creates Value
The mechanism is specific and worth naming. A queue is visible proof that other people have already decided something is worth wanting. In behavioural economics, this is social proof — the tendency to use others’ choices as a signal of quality under uncertainty. The queue makes that signal literal and spatial. It is legible from the street. It generates its own further queues.
The most successful viral food moments shared a few traits: strong visuals, emotional resonance, and accessibility — or, at times, strategic inaccessibility, marked by long reservation queues and sellouts that happened almost instantly. Strategic inaccessibility is the key phrase. Scarcity, whether real or managed, creates desire. The limited-edition pastry, the walk-in-only policy, the bakery that sells out by 10am — these are not just operational realities. They are signals. They tell you, and everyone watching you, that you made it in time.
The Line Itself Became Content
TikTok now functions less like a hype machine and more like a real-time testing ground for the bakery and snack industry. Platform data shows users are more likely to try foods they’ve seen on TikTok than on other social channels, particularly among Gen Z and younger millennials.
The relationship between TikTok and the queue is circular and self-reinforcing. A video creates demand. Demand creates a queue. The queue is filmed. The film creates more demand. Participation becomes content at every stage — the discovery, the waiting, the eating, the post. Some business owners go out and film their own queues. Others resist it, aware that the dynamic is, as one bakery co-owner put it, “inherently quite inaccessible and only tailored to certain people.” Not everyone can stand for an hour. The queue as cultural value is also the queue as exclusion — a point that sits awkwardly beneath the celebration of it.
Scarcity as Aesthetic
The broader cultural logic connects to a shift explored in Why Luxury Is Becoming More Experiential Than Material: the premium increasingly attaches to things that cannot be mass-produced or easily replicated. A small-batch croissant from a neighbourhood bakery with a 45-minute queue is, by definition, not available everywhere. That unavailability is part of its value — not despite the inconvenience, but because of it.
The pop-up format takes this logic further. A temporary venue with limited dates, no reservations, and a line around the block converts scarcity into event. Fashion sample sales operate the same way. The value is partly in the object and partly in the effort required to obtain it. Waiting becomes a form of commitment that validates the choice — and, shared online, validates the self.
The Queue as Urban Ritual
What has emerged across London, Paris, and Copenhagen is something that functions less like consumer behaviour and more like urban ritual. The Saturday morning bakery queue at TOAD or Hart Bageri is a social occasion. People arrive with friends, check phones, overhear conversations, become briefly part of a community of shared waiting. The café that follows is, in some ways, secondary.
In that sense, the queue has always been part of urban life — the corner bakery, the market stall, the popular lunch counter. What is new is the speed at which TikTok can manufacture these moments, the global reach of that manufacturing, and the degree to which the waiting itself has become the thing being documented and shared. The croissant is excellent. But the photograph of the queue, taken before you reached the front of it, had already done its work.
In many cities, the queue is no longer a byproduct of popularity. It is part of the product itself.
Key Sources
- The Londoner, “Influencers, bouncers and lines around the block: How viral queues took over London”: https://www.the-londoner.co.uk/influencers-bouncers-and-lines-around-the-block-how-viral-queues-took-over-london/
- Bakery and Snacks, “Postcard from Paris: Where the bakery queue is fast becoming a global trend”: https://www.bakeryandsnacks.com/Article/2025/07/03/paris-croissants-and-the-rise-of-bakery-tourism/
- Travel and Tour World, “The Rise of Bakery Tourism”: https://www.travelandtourworld.com/news/article/the-rise-of-bakery-tourism-how-social-media-transformed-patisseries-into-major-tourist-spots/
- Trill, “TikTok’s Viral Food Trends of 2025 Wrapped”: https://www.trillmag.com/life/food-drink/viral-food-trends-2025/
- Bakery and Snacks, “Top 10 TikTok trends shaping bakery and snacks in 2026”: https://www.bakeryandsnacks.com/Article/2026/01/27/top-10-tiktok-trends-shaping-bakery-and-snacks-in-2026/
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