Rebel Foods scales up expansion of cloud kitchens amid Covid-19 pandemic

Rebel Foods, the world’s largest internet restaurant company, is scaling up operations of building and running virtual restaurant brands in India and globally, with rising adoption of its services amid the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.

Mumbai-based Rebel Foods, and India’s master franchise for US fast-food giant, Wendy’s, have reached a new milestone with opening 28 new locations in 9 new Indian cities. Enabling the expansion of the brand in India with its cloud kitchen model, Wendy’s is now available across 16 cities and delivers in 75 locations across the country. Accelerating this growth further, Rebel Foods will further develop and operate approximately 200 Internet Restaurants in the next two years. 

“Rebel Foods' forte lies in scaling a well-known brand and providing culinary excellence with the Rebel Operating System. Through our network, we have been able to rapidly scale the brand across the country at far lower levels of capital, a localized menu keeping in mind customer preferences has added more value,” said Ankur Sharma, co-founder, Rebel Foods. “Our customers are constantly reaching out to us to bring Wendy's in their cities and we will continue to expand across the length and breadth of the country, for India to have a bite of Wendy’s.”

One of the most ambitious associations for the brand, Rebel Foods, opened its first Wendy’s cloud kitchen in New Delhi in December 2020 and currently runs 75 Internet Restaurants across India. The 16 cities where the brand is now present through the Rebel networks are Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, New Delhi, Gurgaon, Lucknow, Noida, and Chandigarh. The other locations include Amritsar, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Mohali, Panchkula and Zirakpur. Wendy’s has been able to reach new locations and customers in India in a short span on the Rebel ecosystem and its abilities to scale brands quickly and easily on the Rebel Operating System.

“Apart from delivery being a secular trend, and the ability to ensure a consistent, quality customer experience, we think what the pandemic has added is an element of safety,” said Sharma. “And this is where technology plays a huge part. Our operating system helps touch all these three touch points and hence, the growth we’ve witnessed with Wendy’s recently.”

Wendy’s is available in the sixteen cities through platforms such as EatSure App, EatSure web, Zomato and Swiggy.

“Globally, we are expanding and opening (cloud kitchens) in new locations in Indonesia, in UAE and hopefully another couple of international (markets) during the course of this year,” said Sharma. “We are also penetrating deeper into the existing markets.”

Founded in 2011, Rebel Foods is parent to brands such as Faasos, Behrouz Biryani, Ovenstory Pizza, Mandarin Oak, The Good Bowl, SLAY Coffee, Sweet Truth, Wendy’s and more. With over 450 kitchens across 70 cities, Rebel Foods has developed their full-stack technology - Rebel OS - through which multiple brands are launched and scaled up in a very short period. Through the Rebel Launcher, powered by Rebel OS, the company has launched over 25 brands. Rebel Foods currently operates over 45 brands across 10 countries - India, Indonesia and United Arab Emirates (Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah). The other countries include the United Kingdom, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and Bangladesh.

“Hopefully we will be able to get another couple of international brands in our portfolio very soon,” said Sharma. “There are a lot of conversations which are happening and there is a lot of interest in this kind of model.”

The capital for such expansion is also coming from last year’s funding in October, where Rebel Foods became the country’s 31st unicorn after it raised $175 million in a Series F round led by Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), sovereign wealth fund of the State of Qatar with participation from existing investors Coatue and Evolvence. This round catapulted the company to a unicorn status with a valuation of $1.4 billion, up from about $800 million in 2020.

Globally, Rebel Foods competes with Taster in France, Keatz in Germany, Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick’s start-up City Storage Systems and London-based Karma Kitchen.

Food delivery firms themselves such as DoorDash, Uber Eats, Deliveroo, and Swiggy had also entered the cloud kitchen space.

In India, it also competes with Ola Foods, the food business arm of the SoftBank-backed ride-hailing firm Ola, which has expanded to a network of technology-enabled kitchens. Ola had expanded its network of cloud kitchens to serve more customers. The firm also recently announced expansion plans of its quick commerce service- Ola Dash. In the next six months, Ola Dash aims to expand its dark store network to 500 dark stores spread across 20 cities, making it the largest dark store network in India. The term dark store refers to a retail outlet or distribution centre that caters exclusively for online shopping.

“The idea is not to differentiate ourselves from anybody at all. Till the time we are serving the customer-first missions and doing it in the right manner, I  think we are doing our job,” said Sharma. “We believe that our operating system has to be super robust, with not only software technology, but also hardware technology to make the lives of our employees simpler and ensure great safety, hygiene and consistency of the food across the board. That's what we are focusing on.”

Analysts said that key internet economies, namely e-tail, eHealth, FoodTech, Online Mobility, and Billpay and Recharge experienced a downward spiral during Covid, but re-emerged much stronger and shocked us with commendable post-Covid recovery. An expanding and maturing user base that is increasingly satisfied with internet services has further propelled the growth of internet-based businesses.

“India’s journey to a $1 trillion consumer internet economy has been a unique story of multiple internet sectors such as e-tailing, e-health, foodtech, online mobility, and quick commerce, coming together to create a strong foundation for a consumption-led economy,” said Anil Kumar, CEO and founder of consulting firm RedSeer, at a recently conducted event by the firm, Ground Zero 6.0. “The ongoing journey from digital-first to digital forward was a result of multiple internet sectors having shown strong momentum post-Covid.”

It has been estimated that India’s internet economy is surging ahead with over 50 per cent year-over-year growth in 2021, and is poised to be a staggering $1 trillion economy by 2030, according to a new report by RedSeer.

This healthy expansion is being fueled by a rapidly increasing internet penetration rate, high-speed internet access, and increased online shopping and digital content consumption.