I'll be honest heading into Meatstock Toowoomba I was nervous. This was the first event Bellmott had ever done. No previous markets, no festival experience to fall back on. Just us, a 3x3 booth, and my ute tray full of cold brew concentrate goon bags, and a lot of hope that people rocking up to Australia's biggest BBQ festival would be into what we dishing out.
Turns out, a lot of them already were.
One of the things that fully caught me off guard in the best way was how many people at Meatstock Toowoomba already knew Bellmott. Some had found us through our Instagram ads, others had been following along on TikTok and seen the whole journey the production side, the brand building, all of it. Walking into your very first market and having people come up and say they already drink your product is a pretty surreal feeling.
The Meatstock festival atmosphere was something else. It's not just a food market, it's a proper event. Live music, BBQ competitions, pitmasters who are genuinely elite at what they do, and a crowd that turns up because they actually love this stuff. For me personally it reminded me a lot of where I grew up in the outback. That easy, unhurried energy where people stop and chat and mean it. It felt like the right crowd for Bellmott from the moment we arrived.
Now Friday was cooked.
We had no power. At a festival where we're trying to serve ice cold cold brew concentrate samples, having no power is a bit of a disaster. We were left high and dry and I wasn't sure how we were going to pull it off. Then our good mate Brad from Dave Audio came through with ice, which genuinely saved the day. We ended up serving fresh icy cold samples and it worked. People were stopping, trying it, and seemed pretty keen.
Saturday was a completely different story. We had power from the start and from the jump we were absolutely swamped. The Meatstock Toowoomba crowd on Saturday hit differently bigger, louder, more of them, and they were ready to buy. We were working flat out the entire day. The only reason I don't have more photos from the weekend is because there was genuinely no time to stop and take them.
We did manage to sneak away briefly to catch Morgan Evans on stage, and I got my hands on some brisket that I'm still thinking about.
The cold brew concentrate sample testing went really well across both days. The goon bag format does a lot of the heavy lifting people are curious about it, they stop to ask how it works, and once they taste it the conversation is basically over. We moved solid numbers on the 1L and 2L concentrate and the bundles, and the Bellmott tees had a good run too.
For anyone wondering whether Meatstock Toowoomba is worth attending as a vendor I do think it's worth a shot.
We'll be back next year. Already looking forward to it.
