By Kim Mackrael
LEMBEKE, Belgium -- Those tasty Biscoff cookies that Delta and American Airlines serve are popping up everywhere these days -- across the U.S. and as far afield as Poland and Singapore.
But unlike the globalized Oreo, Biscoffs don't come from an American snack-food giant. Their rising fashion is the result of a decadeslong push by a third-generation family business based in the Belgian countryside.
After building its first non-European cookie factory in North Carolina in 2019, Lotus Bakeries partnered with Oreo owner Mondelez International to distribute its cookies in India. A new Biscoff factory in Thailand will be fully operational this year.
The company's latest expansion builds on an early accomplishment: branding a generic product. Lotus's caramelized cookies are a ubiquitous traditional treat back home in Belgium, where they have long been known as speculoos. A push to enter the U.S. market several decades ago led the company to craft the trademarkable Biscoff name.
Biscoff revenue was above $700 million in 2024. By comparison, Mondelez said Oreo revenue surpassed $4 billion in 2022.
During a recent visit to Australia and New Zealand, Lotus Chief Executive Jan Boone said he was struck by how many Biscoff-inspired treats he saw in coffee shops -- a sign of export success and how social media has helped boost the brand's popularity.
"If you tell people that you are from Biscoff, they go wild," Boone said of his experience on that trip. Even though that was his plan, he is still surprised by the international appetite.
Boone's grandfather founded the company. His father and uncle created the Biscoff brand and introduced it to the world -- as an in-flight snack in the U.S. and later in stores. Boone wants to bring it into the mainstream.
"In every good company, every generation has to bring something," he said in a recent interview at the company's headquarters. "My dream, and hopefully then my legacy, is that I want to build a global brand."
Lotus was founded in 1932 in a village near the medieval city of Ghent. It developed a following at home in Belgium as well as nearby France and the Netherlands. It created the name Biscoff -- a combination of biscuit and coffee -- when it sought to gain a foothold in the U.S. about 50 years later.
The cookies caught the attention of an airline food-service company during a food fair in Chicago. The timing was right: Delta was looking for a new in-flight snack following a peanut shortage, a spokeswoman for the airline said. Delta started serving Biscoff in the 1980s.
They soon developed a cult following. Flight attendants squeezed lime juice on Biscoff to create Key lime pie flavor, and passengers tried their luck scoring extra packages to bring home.
"Everyone is very excited when they get these cookies," said Frances McGee, a longtime Delta flight attendant who said people sometimes ask her for Biscoffs when they spot her in her uniform outside of work.
Lotus took mail-order requests to accommodate Americans who had tried the cookies on a flight and wanted to have them at home , and gradually moved into U.S. stores.
The company enlisted Bain & Company's Christophe De Vusser to help revamp its commercial strategy in 2009. De Vusser, a former schoolmate of Boone's who has since been promoted to Bain's chief executive, advised Lotus to focus its global growth efforts on Biscoff rather than its other products.
"Biscoff wasn't necessarily a high growth area at that time," De Vusser said. After seeing how people reacted to the airline cookie and its link to coffee, he said, "We thought there was something big to be done."
Lotus built an advertising strategy emphasizing Biscoff's connection to coffee. In-store displays in the U.S. advertised Biscoff as "the airline cookie" to capitalize on consumers' familiarity.
Sales took off, and the U.S. became Biscoff's biggest market in 2016. Partnerships with fast-food brands including McDonald's and Krispy Kreme introduced more consumers to the flavor. The cookies are still Delta's most popular in-flight snack, with some 70 million packets served annually, according to the airline.
Biscoff's recipe is closely guarded. Just six people at Lotus know the entire recipe. Ingredients are coded and Lotus creates a premix at its Belgian factory to send to the U.S. and Thailand.
Boone added a natural-foods division to the company about a decade ago to focus on healthy snacking. But Biscoff is still Lotus's top source of revenue.
There have been challenges. Lotus spent roughly 15 years trying to break into India's fragmented retail market through a distributor, Boone said, but sales in the country never grew past a couple million euros.
Lotus's expansion into ice cream and chocolate products also hit roadblocks. The experience taught Boone that it was better to focus on the two Biscoff products the company knew best: its namesake cookies and a cookie butter spread the company started selling in 2008.
In 2024, Boone announced a deal with Mondelez that he hoped would help Lotus deal with two of its earlier roadblocks. Mondelez agreed to make, market and sell the Biscoff brand in India, a market where Boone says the Oreo maker is already a powerhouse. The two companies also agreed to introduce Biscoff-flavored chocolate products.
Lotus and Mondelez later reached a deal with Froneri Ice Cream -- already a partner of Mondelez's -- to release a new Biscoff ice cream this year.
It is part of a strategy Boone hopes will earn Biscoff a place beside the biggest brands on supermarket shelves worldwide. "We don't want to be that imported cookie that is in the back corner," he said.
Write to Kim Mackrael at kim.mackrael@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 02, 2026 10:00 ET (15:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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