Belgian Boys Raises $7M, Brings on Lubetzky’s Equilibra Partners as Backer

Belgian Boys announced today that they closed a round of funding led by Equilibra, the family office of KIND founder Daniel Lubetzky, which is aimed at helping the seven-year old brand to expand its distribution, with a particular focus on fresh breakfast items.

The $7 million round, which officially closed in January, included capital raised over the course of 2021. The company declined to provide details about the other angel investors that took part in the round.

Belgian Boys is certified Women-owned, a process that means 51% of the company is owned, operated and controlled by at least one woman. While Belgian Boys has been looking for an investor for years, it’s taken time to find the right partner, CEO Anouck Gotlib said.

“2021 is the first year that we were like, ‘Okay, we actually know where we’re taking this business in the next decade,’” she said. “[We needed] to know…what the opportunities are for the business so that we could find somebody, a partner, that can elevate that, who could challenge me along the way, that can accelerate and provide us support.”

Part of that journey has included better identifying the company’s product focus and category placement, she added. While the brand has SKUs in many sections of the store, she said, the company has ultimately found the most opportunity in fresh breakfast with its crepes, waffles, pancakes and, most recently, french toast. Though merchandising its waffles alongside staple brands such as Eggo could be a benefit, Gotlieb said the placement made it harder to explain the brand’s more premium positioning.

“We grew up in Belgium and these products are not merchandised in frozen,” she said. “If you think about it, Americans eat eggs, bacon, sausage, yogurt and cereal… so why do you make people walk all the way across the store to buy waffles? It doesn’t make sense.”

The brand is sold in over 4,500 stores including Target, Walmart, Kroger, Whole Foods, Costco, Sams, and Stop & Shop, with 3,000 retailers carrying its breakfast items.

To maintain existing retailers and supply chains, the fresh items are still shipped frozen and many retail accounts have merchandised them in frozen — a placement Gotlib hopes will shift over time. In June 2021, Target stores stocking the breakfast items in fresh (versus stores that had them frozen) saw a 300% to 500% increase in velocities, she said.

The journey to get to this insight has relied on an emphasis on testing and growing slowly, when possible. In 2019 it first launched fresh crepes in 65 Walmart stores — a move Gotlib called a “logistical nightmare” to figure out new supply chains and merchandising strategies. After mastering the process in this smaller group of stores, over the next three years the company slowly rolled out to thousands more.

Though fresh breakfast items have been largely focused around eggs (such as Vital Farms offerings), frozen breakfast products have continued to rise in sales during the pandemic — indicative perhaps of increased consumer attention on this daypart.

While only four of Belgian Boy’s 25 SKUs are frozen breakfast options that can be slacked out, the company still has 21 shelf-stable indulgent snacks. Given the emphasis on fresh breakfast, the company plans to discontinue roughly six of these other products by the end of 2022, Gotlib said. Discontinuing too many of these cookies, cakes, and stroopwafels could risk losing some retailers, she added, however the company has restricted this set of products to relatively smaller retail chains such as Whole Foods.

These products also act as an introduction to the brand and help build out a brand identity centered around fun and indulgence. Because Belgian Boys imports all of its products from abroad, which could lead to copycat brands, Gotlib said this positioning is vital in maintaining its current customer base and bringing new shoppers into the fold.

“[Some of these products] in Europe are marketed as a commodity,” she said “We put it in a pink box and market it in a way that its an experience we give the consumer.”