Rebel Foods

Honestly we just wanted to launch our new Teriyaki Burgers. And somehow ended up creating one of the craziest fandom nights Indian QSRs have ever seen. 🫡 Like I’m not even exaggerating! Our BTM store in Bengaluru was PACKED. Anime fans just exploded in. People entering in full cosplay. Random fan conversations happening in corners. Everybody taking pictures of everybody. Screaming every time a new character walked in. And the whole store looked INSANE. Cherry blossoms all over the ceiling, Japanese umbrellas and lanterns hung pretty, lucky cats waving at everyone and peak manga vibes across the space. Amidst all was the Redhead Baddie entertaining the crowd like always. Over 300 anime lovers showed up! Anime creators came through with their communities. Cosplayers absolutely went all out. We gave away ₹65,000 worth of cosplay prizes. And FREE FLOWING Teriyaki Burgers for literally everyone. 🍔 Alongside anime hampers packed with bucket hats, tees, manga comics (yes, we made them!!) and all kinds of nerdy little things we wanted the fans to cherish! Honestly the nicest part was that nobody was pretending to be someone else. People were just fully themselves. Loud. Passionate. Crazy. Happy. No marketing. No gimmick. Just pure fandom energy and customer love. ❤️ Still cannot believe we pulled this off inside a burger joint tbh. 😉🎌🍔 Mohit Joy Jay saurabh Drishty Manimay Sakshi Yugendra Nishant Ankush Ankur Binay Shreerang Salil Anburaj Rebel Foods

3 types of pain There are all sorts of pains in building a company. Anyone who tells you that founding, building, growing a company is fun, surely hasn't done it themselves. Highs come once or twice every couple of years. Otherwise, it's mostly pain. I have realized that Company building is about managing these pains. Looking back at my 15+ years of running (and sometimes pretending to run) Rebel Foods, I see 3 types of pain. From easiest to toughest: 1) The pain of being written off Times when everyone writes you off - investors, media, the casual bystander. This is the easiest. This is when you take your boldest bets - stroke-of-a-pen decisions, and no one cares. In a convoluted way, this pain feels like freedom. Happened to us twice: written off as a QSR in 2014, and during COVID, when the business came to a grinding halt. Both times, we took calls we couldn't have otherwise. The first led to a new model in F&B; the second to a birth of a platform. 2) The pain of constraints Tougher than the first. The walls close in, the market is brutal, and you're left with one month's payroll. But magic happens when you embrace the constraint. When you're boxed in, the only thing that saves you is thinking outside that box. For us, real estate was the biggest constraint. Revenues were tied to the box, and the box to a brand. As we thought about breaking down those walls (metaphorically, of course), the epiphany of multibrand kitchens occurred. Decoupling real estate from brand opened an infinite canvas. Without constraints, business seems easy and flowing, but like muscles, it atrophies at rest. Like muscles, stress helps companies grow. 3) The pain of moving forward, when all you want to do is stop The toughest one. Akin to a long-distance runner / mountaineer. Fatigue - mental and physical - burnout, no respite. Every bone wants to stop. Yet you move forward. This is the most important skill for building a long-term company. It's called endurance. Paula Radcliffe's coach said, "Her capacity to hurt was unprecedented." At elevated pain thresholds, competition is thinner. That alone leads to winning. At Rebel, we face this constantly. From 20-hour days solving "LPG" outage to year-long supply chain shocks, and every other disruption possible. Chronic, ever-present, pain. But I don't know of an enduring company that got built without battling this pain. The one thing that helps manage all three is the team. When you're written off, boldness needs a few who haven't given up. When walls close in, innovation needs people who treat a dead end as a design brief. But it's the third pain where team matters most. Endurance is lonely by nature. When the people around you feel the burn and keep going anyway, your own choice gets slightly easier. You're not carrying it alone. And somehow, that's enough to get through another day. ----- In the unlikely event that you want to read more of my writings, please check the link in the first comment