Brooklyn-based Belgian Boys has appointed Louisa Lawless as Chief Commercial Officer, tapping a seasoned CPG executive to spearhead its next phase of retail expansion. The hire signals a deliberate step-up in commercial infrastructure for the European-inspired breakfast brand, which has positioned itself at the intersection of convenience and clean-label indulgence in a morning-foods aisle increasingly crowded with challenger brands.
Lawless arrives with nearly 20 years of commercial leadership across high-velocity beverage and food platforms. She most recently served as CCO at Korb Health Group, overseeing commercialization across personalized health verticals. Before that, as EVP of Commercial Marketing & Sales at Nutrabolt, she led the go-to-market strategy for the Bloom, C4, Cellucor, and Xtend portfolios — brands that collectively drove outsized year-over-year scan data gains in the energy and sports nutrition categories. Her earlier tenure at Core Nutrition as Chief Strategy Officer is perhaps the marquee line on her resume: she is credited with helping architect the brand's $525 million acquisition by Keurig Dr Pepper, a benchmark exit for the emerging-brand segment.
Distribution in Focus
At Belgian Boys, Lawless will own the full commercial agenda — retailer partnerships, distribution expansion, and the brand's shelf presence across grocery, mass, and e-commerce channels. The brand has built a foothold in the breakfast aisle on the strength of non-GMO credentials, no artificial flavors or preservatives, and packaging designed to stand out on planogram. It has appeared on Instacart's Fastest-Growing Brands list for three consecutive years, a signal of strong digital velocity that Belgian Boys will look to convert into incremental TDP gains at brick-and-mortar accounts.
For a brand operating in the better-for-you breakfast and morning foods space, expanding ACV is the next logical lever. The breakfast category has seen sustained competition from private label and national brands alike as retailers reconfigure morning-foods sections around convenience formats — pancake kits, frozen waffles, and grab-and-go pastries all competing for the same end-cap and in-line real estate. Belgian Boys' European-inspired positioning — think Belgian waffles, crêpes, and stroopwafels — gives it a differentiated shelf story, but broader distribution requires the kind of disciplined sales infrastructure and retailer relationship management that Lawless has built across multiple brand platforms.
Scaling the Commercial Engine
"Louisa's track record speaks for itself, but what sealed it for us was how excited she is about building," said Anouck Gotlib, CEO of Belgian Boys. "Her energy is contagious and she connected with our team and our mission from the very first conversation."
Lawless echoed the category-creation opportunity. "The brand has real permission to create a new category, and that's a rare thing in CPG," she said, pointing to her experience scaling emerging brands and building high-performing commercial teams as directly applicable to the Belgian Boys growth mandate.
The appointment comes as better-for-you breakfast brands compete with snacking and bakery adjacencies for shopper dollars, and as retailers increasingly demand data-backed velocity stories before committing shelf space. With a CCO whose career spans DSD-heavy beverage categories, multi-retailer national launches, and private label development, Belgian Boys is assembling a commercial team built for a scaled national footprint — not just a specialty-channel story.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
