How did Blankenberge café owner Jill Broos reach the world’s Stella pouring final?

Horeca Vlaanderen and Blankenberge

Plaats

Blankenberge

West Flanders coastal city where Broos runs café ’t Kapiteintje.

Waarom dit belangrijk is

West Flanders coastal city where Broos runs café ’t Kapiteintje.

About

Blankenberge is a seaside municipality and city in the Belgian province of West Flanders. The municipality comprises the town of Blankenberge proper and the settlement of Uitkerke.

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Plaats

London

Host city of the 2026 Global Perfect Serve Awards.

Waarom dit belangrijk is

Host city of the 2026 Global Perfect Serve Awards.

About

London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of 9.1 million people in 2024. Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Western Europe, with a population of 15.4 million. London stands on the River Thames in southeast England, at the head of a 50-mile (80 km) tidal estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major settlement for nearly 2,000 years.

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The recognition brings an international hospitality title back to a familiar corner of the Belgian coast. Horeca Vlaanderen described Broos as Belgium’s beer-pouring champion and praised her second place as an achievement for both her café and the wider Flemish trade. Matthias De Caluwe, the federation’s chief executive, joined regional representatives Yves Van Moorter and Dirk Kamoen and mayor Björn Prasse in celebrating her result.

Broos had travelled to Britain after progressing through Stella Artois’s Belgian Perfect Serve competition. The global final was held on 7 July around the Wimbledon Championships, where Stella Artois was an official beer partner. Ten national representatives took part, according to reports based on information supplied by the brand. Canadian bartender Anthony Saucier won the global title, leaving Broos as runner-up.

That result matters first as a professional achievement. The competition tests work that customers may barely notice when it is done well: glass preparation, control of the tap, the balance between beer and foam, speed, presentation and the manner in which the drink reaches the customer. Contestants underwent training and written and practical assessments before the later rounds. Four reached the semi-final, while the final required competitors to prepare and serve five draught beers to the prescribed standard.

For a Belgium-based reader, the story also carries a recognisable cultural charge. Stella Artois is rooted in Leuven and belongs to Belgian-headquartered brewing group AB InBev, yet its serving ritual is now taught and judged as an international brand standard. A cafébazin from Blankenberge coming within one place of the global title therefore links a highly local form of hospitality with one of Belgium’s most visible consumer exports.

There are two legitimate ways to read that connection. Horeca Vlaanderen frames Broos’s performance as recognition of the skill and pride of an independent hospitality operator. AB InBev presents the Perfect Serve programme more broadly as a means of delivering consistent draught quality across markets. The first account centres the person behind the bar; the second centres a controlled customer experience for a global brand. Both help explain the event, although the awards remain a commercial competition organised around Stella Artois rather than an independent championship covering Belgian beer as a whole.

The distinction is worth retaining because the familiar shorthand of a ‘world championship in Stella pouring’ can make the event sound like a neutral international sporting federation. It is more accurately a global professional and promotional contest within the Stella Artois system. That does not diminish Broos’s performance against representatives from other countries, but it clarifies what was being judged and by whom.

The wider economic setting gives the small ceremony added weight. Statistics Flanders says restaurants and cafés accounted for 47% of Flemish tourism employment in 2024, while the full hospitality industry represented almost 135,000 tourism-related jobs. In a trade built heavily on face-to-face service, an award for technique and welcome functions as publicity for ’t Kapiteintje, Blankenberge and the profession itself.

Celebrating beer service also sits alongside Belgium’s public-health message. The federal health service says alcohol remains embedded in social life but that no level of consumption is entirely without health risk, citing guidance from the Superior Health Council. That perspective does not dispute Broos’s craftsmanship; it places alcohol promotion within a responsibility that commercial and hospitality actors cannot ignore.

No further competitive appearance for Broos has been announced. The immediate next step is local rather than global: ’t Kapiteintje can turn the runner-up finish into reputation and custom, while Stella Artois and Horeca Vlaanderen decide how the Belgian qualifying programme develops. What remains unpublished is the complete scoring breakdown showing how narrowly Broos finished behind Saucier.