“We Consider Each of our Employees a Chef”
Interview with Christophe Bolsius, CCO
From its humble beginnings as a local butchery in Flanders to becoming a pan-European leader in the ready-meal segment, What’s Cooking? has undergone a remarkable transformation – not only in scale, but also in strategy and identity. With a fresh brand name and an unwavering commitment to sustainability, the company is setting the table for the future of convenient, high-quality food.
European Business: Mr. Bolsius, today, What’s Cooking? can look back on 75 years of culinary excellence and business growth. The name of your company is, however, one of your most recent innovations – what led to that change?
Christophe Bolsius: Essentially, our business started out as a small butchery on the outskirts of Ghent in Flanders, founded by a local butcher named Francles Coopman in 1948. While he devoted all his energy to producing delicious savoury products, he didn’t seem to put too much thought into what he wanted to call his company. Maybe that is why he simply named it Ter Beke after a small local river. Today, we operate across 29 different countries all over Europe, and we have experienced especially rapid growth in recent years, both organically and through major acquisitions. Thus, we have long outgrown our original name which is also rather hard to pronounce in most languages other than Dutch, while the many different names of our subsidiaries created some confusion among our strategic partners. That is why we wanted to settle on an easy, fun and friendly new name, and we came up with What’s Cooking? as the solution that was perfect for us. With the underlying meaning of this new name , we also open ourselves up in every touchpoint with our stakeholders for their input and issues.
European Business: In early 2025, you decided to sell your savoury business to focus exclusively on your ready meals from now on. What were the reasons for this strategic choice?
Christophe Bolsius: We had realized for quite some time that the ready meals market still had enormous growth potential, especially in Central and Eastern Europe. We think we are in a unique position to take advantage of this opportunity thanks to our excellent products and our vast experience, and we want to be able to focus on these goals exclusively from now on.
European Business: How different are your products from country to country?
Christophe Bolsius: Some products only vary slightly, while others differ greatly – depending on the market and consumer preferences. That is why we employ dedicated R&I teams in every region we operate in who know all the local taste profiles inside out: After all, it is imperative that we understand our local customers completely so that we can offer them the right products with the flavors they like. We know that even neighboring countries can differ considerably from one another: France, for instance, is a beef country through and through, where pork lasagna would have a hard time on supermarket shelves. Across the border in Belgium, however, you’re immediately in pork country where hardly any beef is sold at all. The cross-country variations we have to take into account even go far beyond our products alone, because different markets also come with different packaging and sustainability requirements which we need to accommodate.
European Business: How important is sustainability to What’s Cooking?
Christophe Bolsius: Sustainability really lies at the core of everything we do – strategically and in our day-to-day operations. That is also where most of our current innovations are coming from, for instance in terms of the plastic reduction in our packaging where we continue to improve. Since we want to make real headway across all scopes from one to three, we also closely involve our partners in constructive discussions to make our supply chains more sustainable and resilient in the future. At What’s Cooking?, we truly feel that we have a strong responsibility for our consumers and for our environment, and we have the clear ambition to be the sustainability leaders in our industry. That is why we invite all our partners to join us on this journey – so that our grandchildren will be able to live happy and fulfilled lives just like us.
European Business: What would you consider to be the star product of What’s Cooking?
Christophe Bolsius: Lasagna is by far our global hero. As a matter of fact, we are widely recognized as ‘the’ lasagna supplier in Europe, and much of our product portfolio has been built around it. When we enter a new market with our famous ready-made meals – regardless of whether we do so in the retail or food-service sector – we usually start out with our lasagna. It is after all one of the world’s most iconic and beloved dishes, and all of our 1,400 employees – or as we like to call them, chefs – spend their entire workdays dedicated to bringing our consumers the highest quality food products out there. Even though lasagna has been a staple for What’s Cooking? for a long time, that doesn’t mean we cannot take an innovative approach to it: For instance, a few years ago, we introduced cold lasagna as a new product variation, meant to be consumed as a refreshing summer dish. At the time, this had been unheard of, and it was probably one of our more daring innovations. Our consumers embraced it from day one, though.
European Business: What is the ambition of What’s Cooking? for the future?
Christophe Bolsius: Our dream is to be perceived as the ready-meal partner of choice across all major food-service and retail markets in Europe. We have all product, marketing and R&I capabilities to make that vision a reality, and we are already exploring promising opportunities beyond Europe where there is growing appetite for high-quality, great-tasting meals.