Founder Stories: Rebellyous Foods

by Foodbevy
June 6, 2021

Let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there. How did your company get started and why?

The company was founded by Christie Lagally, a former Boeing engineer who realized that the plant-based meat industry was being held back due to the small scope of the industry. The US meat industry produces nearly 108 billion pounds of meat, and yet the plant-based meat industry only clocks in at around one fifth of one percent of that. As a mechanical engineer, Christie saw an opportunity to change this through the design and implementation of novel food production equipment. Her experience as an equipment designer enabled her to start a company based on the need for better production equipment for plant-based meat.

 

What is your product and how would you describe it?

At Rebellyous Foods, we make delicious, juicy plant-based chicken nuggets, patties, and tenders. We are a food technology company creating novel manufacturing equipment to create plant-based chicken products that are delicious, scalable, and affordable for everyone.

 

How have you pivoted your business this year?

Prior to COVID our focus was exclusively on foodservice sales. When schools, hospitals, and corporate cafeterias shut down, we had to think fast. We had envisioned going into retail in a few years, but pivoted and within just a couple of months rolled out a packaged product that is now available in more than two dozen grocery stores in the Pacific Northwest. We’ll be ready for our foodservice partners when they come back online. There’s a lot of competition in this space so getting consumer attention is a challenge. The feedback we’ve received from our customers so far has been overwhelmingly positive, so we believe once people try our product, they will keep coming back.

What is your next challenge to overcome?

We are entering what for us is a brand new market – retail. There’s a lot of competition in this space so getting consumer attention is a challenge. We are looking for brokers ready to take on a new line and distribution partners to enable us to get our products to customers.

What do you predict for the food industry over the rest of the year?

Consumer interest in plant-based food is only going to continue to grow. It’s no longer a trend, but firmly in the mainstream. However in order for that to be the case, it has to be affordable and widely available. Rebellyous is a part of the community of people and companies making this possible. By bringing affordable, nutrient-dense, plant-based options into new markets, we’ll make plant-based eating more accessible to everyone, not just well-to-do trend-chasers. With more and more options out there, plant-forward diets can become more than a trend, and more like the norm.

Learn more at: Rebellyous Foods: A New Kind of Nugget for Foodservice 

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