Episode 25
Rebellyous Foods: Creating the Perfect Plant-based Chicken Nugget
Christie Lagally is the founder and CEO of Rebellyous Foods, a team of animal-loving engineers on a mission to revolutionize the food industry.
In this episode of In With the New, Avril speaks with Christie Lagally about her journey from aerospace engineer to founder and CEO of Rebellyous Foods.
Rebellyous Foods is on a mission to build a world where food production is not a dirty business, and they’ve started by creating the perfect plant-based chicken nugget. One with the same juiciness, taste, and texture as a chicken nugget – and at a similar price point.
One of the biggest hurdles for large-scale plant-based chicken production is automation. Existing animal-meat manufacturing systems are efficient and widespread; almost every state in the United States has animal processing operations where chicken, beef and pork products are produced. But the machinery used is purpose-built for animal processing and doesn’t work as well for plant-based meat products, which makes it challenging to scale plant-based chicken production.
Christie believes that more people would buy plant-based meat if it was affordable, and this is what she is trying to accomplish with Rebellyous Foods. She discusses how Rebellyous created the Mock One production system, which reduced labor by 90%. The company is about to release their Mock Two production system, which is capable of producing up to 5600 pounds of product per hour. By bringing scale to the production process, Rebellyous products can be priced similarly to animal-based products.
With their manufacturing capabilities, Rebellyous Foods can produce enough product to serve wholesalers or large organizations. An example is school districts, who serve thousands of meals each day. They are the perfect customer because Rebellyous Foods offers them nutrient-rich, low fat and low-sodium food, at a reasonable cost. It is the perfect product for schools who also get the benefit of serving delicious and environmentally-friendly food to kids.
Listen in to learn more!
Episode Highlights:
4:45 The challenges faced by the plant-based meat industry in achieving scalability
7:17 How Rebellyous Foods is working to make plant-based meat products more affordable
11:22 The challenges of scaling plant-based meat production
23:47 How Rebellyous Foods aims to distribute plant-based meat products