The Tortoise and the Hare: Food that’s Smart and Fast

Revolutionizing Quick Service with Rebel Foods' Blend of Tech and Taste

Rebel Foods’ pipeline is as follows. First, the Food Innovation Center mines audience data to originate viral delivery concepts. These concepts are pushed to a test set of kitchens for production and distribution to drivers. Customers then eat the food, rate the food, and Rebel adjusts the food until metrics are reached for restaurant validation. This validated restaurant becomes a “brand” pushed out to hundreds of ghost kitchens - themselves cooking for between five and ten distinct brands at a time. Rebel takes a software-focused approach across the whole stack, and the kitchen is no different. Each one leverages the frontier of automated appliance, sensor tracking, and machine learning technology. 

Optimized to be zero-waste, Rebel’s kitchen innovation is best illustrated by looking into three machines: the Fryer, the SWAT, and the Rotimatic. You could work a Rebel fryer with one of those claw grabber toys that are basically trash pickers for kids. That’s to say it's a pick-up, drop. Pick-up, drop kind of situation. Once food is dropped into the bubbling oil, whether it be french fries or chicken wings, the fryer gets to work. A camera attached to the top scans the item, uses AI computer-vision to detect its shape, and then triggers a specific temperature. Oil is adjusted to this temp and a timer is set for the ideal cooking. Ding. Pick-up. Repeat. 

Cleverly named, the Size-Weight-Apperance-Temperature (SWAT) machine is the barrier sitting between that fried chicken, as well as every other item produced in a Rebel kitchen, and the customer’s mouth. Each item is placed into the SWAT for data extraction across each of the four metrics by an array of sensors and cameras. If the crispy chicken isn’t crispy enough an alarm sounds. Kitchen employees dispose of the order and their error is logged into the data layer. Everything is logged into the data layer. Rebel operates what it calls the AI Data Brain - a database consisting of every data point logged from their kitchens. Every machine that can be is plugged into this system to be tracked, measured, and optimized for the bottom line. 

The SWAT and the Fryer are just two examples. Rebel’s deployed over forty unique internet-of-things enabled appliances into their digital kitchens. Not included in that list, however, is the Rotimatic. That’s because it's found in over seventy-thousand households instead. Sold since 2018, the Rotimatic takes in water, oil, flour and outputs the beloved Indian flatbread. What’s unique, however, is the first few times that bread won’t taste very good. Users rate their initial Roti on a number of metrics that are plugged into a machine learning algorithm to adjust for a better and better product. Now Rebel. Let’s say a customer likes their pasta extra al-dente. They should be able to rate their noodles in-app so next time the pasta pot will tweak cook time using the same tech as the Rotimatic. Rebel can and will do this, showing its power as a tech innovator first and foremost.