Episode 72

Belgian Boys’ Bagmageddon: Expo West Success or Swag Grab?

At Expo West, everyone was either carrying the Belgian Boys pink bag or talking about it. The line around their booth was for the bag—waffles and pancakes took a backseat. Known for great swag, did Belgian Boys go too big this time? Was it worth the investment? When the bags ran out, did the brand see their show goals realized? Anouck Gotlib, CEO of Belgian Boys, reveals whether it paid off and what they learned from the experience.

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Anouck Gotlib

CEO • Belgian Boys

Anouck Gotlib

CEO • Belgian Boys

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Note: Transcripts are automatically generated and may contain inaccuracies and spelling errors.

Hey everyone, Melissa here.

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On today's Nombase Podcast, I have the distinct pleasure of chatting with Anouck Gotlib, CEO of Belgian Boys, maker of European-inspired waffles, pancakes, crepes, all found in the refrigerated aisle.

But after giving out the hottest swag bags at Expo West 2025, we're starting to wonder, is Belgian Boys in the pink bag business or the waffles and pancake business?

And did they help sell waffles and pancakes?

We're going to get to the bottom of this story.

Anouck, thank you so much for joining us.

This is such a fun show.

Thank you so much, Melissa.

As you were just saying the intro, I was just like, have you ever had someone talk about like bags as a subject versus like, this is a CPG.

You were telling about all the amazing things, the resources for CPG and food and bev.

And we're like, now we're talking about bags, people.

Like, this is crazy, right?

But thanks so much for having me on.

So excited to share our story and to chat Expo West.

Yeah, I know normally we'd be talking about the waffles and pancakes, but today it's all about the bags.

We've sort of been calling it the Belgian Boys Bagmageddon.

And it really was such a wild scenario.

But first, before we get into all of that, let's just get a quick introduction about yourself.

You're the CEO of Belgian Boys and just a quick review of the Belgian Boys brand.

My husband Greg and I started this business about a decade ago.

Belgian Boys, really, we were missing our products.

You hear it from my accent, I'm from Belgium originally.

We were missing our products from Europe and our American friends.

Every time we were bringing them to the States, they were like, oh my God, this is so good.

Where can I buy it?

Where can I find it?

And we're like, maybe we should do this.

Maybe we should launch, bring our European favorites to the US.

And what started as this brand born out of the nostalgia that we had for our authentic treats really evolved into this upgrade from your everyday.

This generation in America grew up eating Eggo waffles and Pop Tarts, but that's not what they want to give the next generation.

And that's really where Belgian Boys comes in with our easy, convenient, delicious and just yummy products like pancakes, waffles, crepes and still a pinch me moment.

Today you can find us in 12,000 stores across the US, from Costco to Target, Walmart, Publix, and all the amazing retailers, partners that we have had over the years.

12,000 retailers is amazing.

And when did you shift from frozen to refrigerated?

The shift from frozen to refrigerated in stores started in 2019, 2020.

Really when we started, we were like, here, pancakes and waffles and buyers were like, oh, frozen breakfast.

Greg and I were like, what is frozen breakfast?

Because in Europe, those products are merchandise, refrigerated.

If you think about breakfast as an occasion, where do you buy breakfast food in the store?

You buy eggs, milk, yogurt, dairy, it's all refrigerated.

So why is there another location where you buy complimentary items?

It took us a lot of time to actually get that use case, get the data points that the retailers, first of all, to show ourself that our gut instincts was right, but also to get those data points for the retailers.

And today, all those retailers have leaned in and are building with us that refrigerated breakfast destination.

We are seeing the consumer really react to it well.

And I'm very, very excited about what that refrigerated breakfast destination will look like in the next five years with Belgian Boys really getting that forefront at the retail landscape.

Well, Belgian Boys has always been delicious, and now they're even more convenient than ever before.

Let's get into Expo West 2025.

For anybody who doesn't know, and I think at this point, everybody knows, even folks who aren't in CPG, that you guys had the most viral swag bag.

It's actually the pink bag that you have right behind you.

Everybody at the show was talking about them.

I saw them being carried around the show.

I saw them on LinkedIn.

So they were such a big hit.

You guys are known for the swag that you do.

It's oftentimes really sort of like out of the box, really inventive.

They're items that you would take home with you and use.

First, let's talk a little bit about the show goals that Belgian Boys had, and that'll sort of help us connect the dots to how you decided to create these pink bags.

What did you want to have happen at Expo West 2025?

You know what?

I really like that you started with show goals, and it's actually a tradition we started at Belgian Boys, I want to say three years back.

You know, after the show, usually you come by and you're like, oh, it was amazing.

But then you're like, was it amazing?

Was it not amazing?

Yeah, we had lots of traction, lots of people.

But how do you actually say that was business, or that was the goal for the graphic designer, the creative, everybody has their own goals.

And so actually, it starts before the show, everybody that either comes to Expo or was a part of planning Expo West, right?

Okay, this is success for me at the show, right?

And for someone on our sales team, it might mean I want to meet with this person, I want to sell this in, like very, very detailed oriented.

And then ahead of the show, we share what everyone's goals are, right?

For the creative director, it is I want to make sure that I walk the whole show.

So it's going to be us, the rest of the team that are like, okay, you now go take a break and go walk, because we know that that for you is success.

So everybody really spells those success metrics ahead of time.

A lot of them for us this year were sales oriented, but then also brand oriented.

We wanted to make sure that we make the, how you call it, like recaps of Expo, kind of.

I think we have a big check mark there.

So really super excited, super proud of our team because every one of our goals from every single team member, including the budget ones, were met.

So we're very excited.

That's amazing.

And how did the swag this year, how was it invented to achieve those goals?

Was it just to draw as many people to the booth as possible because maybe your sales team had retailer goals, marketing had sort of like branding goals?

How did that bag translate to getting your goals accomplished?

Well, I do want to say that it's not like this whole was planned.

We were like, let's put an awesome swag and then we'll have this like crazy frenzy like what happened.

That will lean in everybody into our booth.

That was not our strategy.

That was, I think, how it just evolved.

What happened is that we created a bag.

There were not a lot of those bags.

First of all, it's gorgeous.

It's really craveable.

It's like something you want.

It's not just like this cheap bag.

We did spend more on the bag.

The result of us spending more on every bag made that we could order less bag and give away less bag, right?

Because it was part of the swag budget.

So that was one.

The other thing was also that when we ordered them, couldn't make more because there was the cutoff of like New Year in Asia.

And so we couldn't make more.

So there was just a lot of incidental things that happened.

We wanted it to be now some limited edition bag that is going to be with less people, right?

So it was a bit of a lot of happy incidents.

And now what happened is that people were just asking for the bag to everybody.

People that were walking with the bag were like, where did you get that Belgian Boys?

Where did you get that Belgian Boys?

And so all of a sudden, we had like massive amount of people come to us at the boot.

And I'll talk to you about day one.

Like a lot of people came just to the boot.

Can I have a bag?

Can I have a bag?

We went out of our allocated amount for day one.

Now, if you look at this bag, it's also very voluminous, right?

It's big.

So we didn't have enough room in the back of our boot to put all the bags.

I'm talking to you about very logistic issues, but like really, so we ran out of the day one allocation and we're like, come back in the morning, come back in the morning, come back tomorrow morning.

People started asking at what time?

We're like, when it opens?

Melissa, now I'm going to tell you, it's like a movie.

Like you can't imagine, like if you weren't there, you can't really grasp this.

So we get there, show opened at 10 a.m.

I believe.

We get there before the show opened.

I think our first team members got there around 8 a.m.

and they were texting in the Slack and they were like, we have people waiting for our bags.

We're like, it's not possible.

All of a sudden, I get texts of people texting me.

They're like, there's a line in front of your boot.

We get there and I'm trying to explain to you, our boot was like we had a back wall.

There was our fridges.

We could go behind the wall, but there was no counter or anything.

It was just like open area.

And all of a sudden, there's like massive amount of people, I don't know, 100, 200, 300, or like tons of people in front of us waiting for us.

And we're like, we can't give away bags before it starts.

So we're like, okay, then we will start to go.

And then we're like, five, and people are like, starting to calm down organically from the crowd.

Five, four, three, two, and we're like, holy shit, like people are starting to advance.

And that's actually when it got scary, Melissa, because we started handing out the bags.

And you know, it was fun.

We're like, here, take a bag.

And people are like happy, they're getting a bag.

And we're like, exit this way.

And all of a sudden, I started like, there are some pictures, you can see me.

I'm like going like this with my fingers.

One of our team members is going like this.

You can see eyes.

People are starting to walk forward.

And we're like, people, can you please move on back?

And that's when it actually got scary.

We had an incident as well, which had us call security.

People were starting to stampede on top of each other.

There's a picture on LinkedIn where you see actually a woman getting elbowed.

I saw that.

It just went out of hand.

I was just like, shut it down.

I was genuinely scared, right?

You have a mask.

My face was shoved against the wall.

I'm trying to...

I don't know if people are seeing this video or not, but we were just getting crushed forward by a mass of hundreds of people.

It sounds kind of like a nightmare, like an Expo West nightmare.

Nightmare, nightmare.

So I saw also people now asking on LinkedIn, no, Belgian Boys fake security.

Like honestly, I wish I had to fake security.

Wait, wait, wait.

People on LinkedIn were saying that you faked having security there?

I said that we faked having security.

I mean, our security guys looked like they were like six foot, I don't know what, huge.

Expo West came to us after we shut down.

I'm just like, people disperse, no more bags.

We shut it down.

That's what I said.

Because I was scared, scared for myself, scared for our team and scared for people literally getting crushed.

Right?

And so Expo West were like, I was freaking out because I was like, oh my God, they're going to shut us down.

What did we do?

We're like, this was not our intention, right?

To drive a crowd.

And they were like, we're so sorry.

They were actually really, really nice.

Honestly, a shout out to people working on that show floor and being with the security at Expo West.

Like I had no idea how much we needed security there, but like we actually did.

And they were like, listen, we got you.

We're so sorry you went through that incident and we'll help you.

We'll help you guys out.

We'll get you security.

We have five, six foot tall guys coming there.

Like we're, I'm like, what the hell just happened, right?

To be honest, we were on the fence.

We were like, no, we're stopping with this bag.

It was just too scared.

They were like, we can help you.

We'll do this in an organized way.

They helped us write two lines from both sides of our boot.

One went around the corner like four halls deep, like four rows deep or something.

It was like insane, insane.

And the other one went to the end of the hall.

Like we have videos of that on TikTok.

You just see people, people, people waiting and it went into a very civilized way.

Now again, we gave out what was in the boot and then we had no more.

So we had to wait till they brought back from the back room, which created this like hype, demand.

Oh no, I just waited in line and they don't have anymore.

And we felt awful.

But like honestly, it was really more the logistics that ended up becoming, making it a hype, you know?

And I would imagine you both have folks who should be in their own booths and people who are trying to make the most of two and a half days at Expo.

So to spend that much time in a line for a bag is unbelievable.

Well, it is a very beautiful bag.

It is a very beautiful bag.

I think also what makes it special is that it's not branded on the outside.

I mean, we did have this like, which I loved it, our marketing team, we were the number one fastest growing brand on Instacart of 2024.

Yay team, yay us.

But so we did these like, tags on the bag, we're number one.

And then the inside of the bag is also just like branded with our, the lining is branded Belgian Boys.

So from the outside, you don't see it, but I think that's what made it very just craveable and wantable, because this is a bag I can walk with in the street, right?

Not a tote bag or another tote bag with another company's logo.

For anybody who's listening to the podcast version, there's a really well designed tag that's attached to the bag with the Belgian Boys logo that you would take off, and then the inside is lined with the Belgian Boys branding.

And this is something that you actually mentioned that's sort of one of your philosophy, your swag philosophies to not necessarily put the branding huge on the side of the bag or whatever it is, because people don't necessarily want to carry that around with them everywhere they go.

Yes.

I mean, I look at myself as also an expo goer, right?

And like, what would be things that I want for myself, right?

And if I don't want it for myself, then we're not making it, right?

And that's kind of our test for Greg, myself, and our creative team.

We're just like, if it's just another swag, then it's just another swag.

It's got to be things that can live in people homes for the next foreseeable future.

And we have so many stories like that.

Ray from the BevNET team, he always goes like, oh, my daughter still has her French-toed purse from like, and that was in 2022.

And that's three years that that purse still lives in their home.

Like, that's crazy, right?

I know you have that little makeup bag.

To this day, I still have that pink little zip bag, and I keep all of my wires and stuff for traveling in it.

It's just a really well-made, attractive bag.

I need to call out some of the folks who are commenting here.

I have Melinda Stanger, who says, wow, budget goals and other goals, congrats, and that she loves the inside branding.

And then Lara Pellin says that she was there, and as an exhibitor too, a huge shout out to the staff at the booth for handling all of the chaos like pros.

Melinda also says she's constantly asking herself and others, what can we hand out that's different, unique, and actually usable?

And that's actually a really good point.

How did you and the team decide that it was going to be the pink bag?

Like, you know, did you go between a few different ideas and options?

How did it, how did the idea come about?

Yes, I mean, there's a lot of brainstorming and ideations and a lot of, you know, a lot of also iterations, right?

So the first sample we got did not look like this, right?

So we go from very particular and maybe that's part of, you know, me.

I used to be in the fashion industry.

Again, I can't claim this.

My team has led this, the bag, really.

I wasn't a part of the whole creation, but yes, I was there touching the swatches, change the zipper, do this, change the lining.

So I think we have a very creative first mindset at Belgian Boys.

Were you between like, we should do, trying to think about like a hat or maybe a pop socket thing for a phone?

Like, how do you decide that this was going to be what you wanted to do?

So it really started with our, what did we do at Belgian Boys?

And if you came to our Belgian Boys booth, you could see our mission.

We started this podcast with refrigerated breakfast, refrigerated, refrigerated, refrigerated everything we do.

And so really this bag started with refrigerated.

Okay, we want to make sure it's an insulated bag, right?

Because it ties back to our product that goes in refrigeration.

And that's really why then it ended up with the cool and the puffer, the pufferness of it, like not just do a simple insulated bag, like you would buy at a retailer with their own brand logo.

But like, how can you take that to the next level?

That was, I want to say the ideation behind what became the final product.

I didn't even realize that it was an insulated bag.

And I'm willing to bet that many of the folks who were lined up for it didn't know that as well.

So that's sort of like an added bonus for so many folks who just thought it was a super cool bag.

And I'm curious, so you had so many people lined up.

You ran out of the bags at some point completely.

What did you say to the people who were still online when you, how did you deal with the people who didn't get a bag?

Well, we kept saying come back later, and they were asking when is later.

And I literally, I felt horrible, but I was like, I don't know, because the reality was that you ordered a palette from the back room.

Even if you say bring it by 2 p.m.

Chances are it's not too on the dot, right?

So it takes time and so it would just pop up.

And I had no idea.

So the most common answer we said was just come back in the morning, which ended up day two morning was a crazy, like a shit show, honestly, a scary shit show.

Then became organized and on day three we were well prepared.

New Hope were there helping us with the security, the lines were there.

But we did, we ran out.

And that's when actually after Expo West, people started saying like, how can I get the bag?

How can I get the bag?

How can I get the bag?

People were trying to buy the bags off people's shoulder for 100 bucks.

I'm just like, what?

We had one person come back to our booth crying, literally crying, and she's like, I dropped my bag.

I put my bag in the latest room on the floor and someone stole my bag.

And I just I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

It was just insane for a bag.

And we saw it on eBay, right?

How much was it listed for on eBay?

And I swear, it's not us.

We have not planted this on eBay.

There was a listing of harpers on eBay for a thousand bucks.

To your point, so, you know, someone said that you faked the security, and I'm sure people are saying that you faked the eBay.

How do you deal with the haters?

Do you just not care because it doesn't matter?

Does that do you respond to them?

How do you deal with those folks?

We're doing our own thing.

And not only that, we're really having fun while we're doing it.

We were just on a call, a team call with our whole team.

And we're creating this moment and we're writing it and, you know, hate us, whatever.

We're doing our own thing.

We're building Belgian Boys our way.

Is the swag bar up?

That bar is raised, right?

And I think it's raised for ourselves as well.

Now we're just like, OK, what do we do next year?

And like, I think it has flattery the haters, right?

Like, OK.

So what, how do you outdo this next year?

Our team already has tons of ideas.

I love actually, usually after Expo West, you come back and you're like, oh, I need a break here.

Like, I'm creatively dead.

And this year we were like all creatively, like very inspired.

And there's already, I know, a mood board of like idea board and stuff, because it's fresh in there, right?

So our teams already started to pencil up some ideas and it's going to be definitely even better than this year.

So I'm very excited.

I'm already getting in line.

Well, there's a lot of people in that line.

We opened a waiting list for our bags and I just, I can't believe how many people are in that waitlist already.

It's just, it's crazy.

Is it hundreds of people on the waitlist?

Thousands.

That's insane.

And I want to point out too, you told me this as we were getting ready to go on, the bag sightings aren't limited to the CPG industry.

Where did one of your team members just recently have a bag moment?

Our team member was on a cruise vacationing and she had a hat that said Belgian Boys with our logo.

And someone came to her and said, oh my God, is this the company that has those bags from TikTok?

Like what?

So definitely beyond industry.

And it's a bit surreal.

You made a point that I think is a really good one as well.

And it's about how CPG folks are consumers as well.

So not only were you marketing to the retailers and investors and other folks in the industry, but talk a little bit about how you view everybody at Expo West as a consumer of the products as well.

Yes, we don't do consumer shows in our company yet.

We don't do the Coachella and all of that of the world or our grassroots event yet.

We do demos, but Expo West for us is, yes, it's a buyer show and our sales team is there with like, we need to meet our buyers.

But at the end of the day, everyone is a consumer at Expo West.

And when you are there representing your brand, you're the brand ambassador for your brand, and that's the engagement, right?

Like when we say to someone, I'm sorry, I don't have a bag anymore, that's their impression of Belgian Boys, right?

And so how you say that, how you share that, like it goes, there's so much that goes into that.

And if you think about it, Expo West, it's all people that actually love CPG, that love specialty foods, and that spend money on those kinds of products.

So it's one of your most captive audiences, right?

And so we really see Expo West as not only a buying show, but like a brand moment where Belgian Boys can really grow household penetration as well.

There were 100,000 of people at that show, right?

So how can we make sure that as many people have an interaction with our brand, either direct or indirectly?

So smart.

Melinda Stanger has the million dollar question.

So how has the hype really helped sales?

So in the beginning, it's interesting, Melinda, because in the beginning, we were like, oh, no, we can't even see our buyers because there were so many people at our booth that were not our buyers.

And we were like, what did we do?

But actually, it ended up luring people in, even buyers that were, I would say, a bit on the fence on the brand.

We were like, here, take a bag, go.

And then they were walking the show with the bag.

And after like 50 people asked you which brand is this, you're like, they came back to our booth and they're like, I gotta get your brand into my stores because there is demand for your brand, right?

There is demand for your product.

Everybody's asking me about Belgian Boys and I'm here the one not carrying it, right?

So I think it really helped.

It was madness.

I think it was more, but it actually, I think it unlocked us to achieve a lot of our sales goals that we had at the show.

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For all of the work and energy and some of the terror that went into Bagmageddon, I'm so glad that you also were able to achieve your show goals as well.

If there are brands out there, and who doesn't want to create a viral swag moment, what's your advice to them?

Or maybe what's your warning to them?

I think you have to think outside the box.

And I think also not plan for a viral moment, because if anything comes out of this conversation, or we did not plan this that way.

We did not say, we're going to have this amazing bag.

Yes, this we planned.

We're going to have an amazing bag.

But we did not plan.

We're going to release 50 in that hour, and 100 in that hour, and we're going to have security.

And this is what's going to create the virality.

If you have something great, then it's just that snowball effect.

And the more you force it and try to replicate something, you all know that that doesn't work.

It's got to be authentic to your brand, to your point.

For us, it was okay with the insulated bag.

That was the ideation behind it.

And what could make that there were a lot of other brands that also had really cool swag.

There was the brand with the bean bags.

I thought that was really cute.

So I think it's about doing it the authentic way for your brand and not just, okay, let's just do what Belgian Boys did, because it's not going to be authentic to your brand.

So don't try.

And it's something that I say here, but I say this to us, our team as well, right?

Like when we see brands doing really cool things out there, I don't say, okay, we don't say, oh, let's replicate what they're doing.

We're just like, okay, this is a great inspiration.

And now what is our interpretation of something that we can do?

I do have a question from LinkedIn.

Erica Dermer wants to know, how does a brand replicate this on a small scale if they don't have a large budget?

I do have one comment from Zach Taylor saying, you'd be surprised how affordable custom bags can be if you're comfortable working with an organization like Alibaba, that kind of thing.

Any advice on how to get something really amazing made if you don't have a big budget?

Make less.

Yeah.

You don't have to make that many, right?

And then it's about creating the content and replicating that content, and then pushing that content as far and as wide as you can, right?

It's not because you can't make, and again, Belgian Boys didn't have that many bags.

We made, I think, less than a thousand bags.

So we didn't have that many either.

For a hundred thousand people, right?

Right, exactly.

Yeah, per the crowd.

Erica Dürmer, thank you so much for that question, and for everyone else who asked questions today.

Anouck Gotlib, CEO of Belgian Boys, thanks so much for jumping into this.

This was such a fun story, and I think it's inspiring, and I don't know, I'm just so happy that for all of the kind of, you know, effort and everything that you all went through, that it was a success all the way around.

Thank you so much for having me, and this was actually really, really fun.

So much fun.

It's always fun talking to you.

For everybody else, thank you so much for joining the Nombase Podcast, and we'll see you next time.

That concludes another episode of the Nombase Podcast.

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