Wendy's ramps up India presence in partnership with Rebel Foods

Rebel Foods will partner with Sierra Nevada Restaurants to develop and operate 250 Wendy’s cloud kitchens and 150 Wendy’s brick-and-mortar restaurants.

US-based food chain The Wendy’s Company has announced that it will be ramping up its Indian presence this year. This includes a partnership with Mumbai-based company Rebel Foods.

Formerly known as Faasos, Rebel Foods operates 15-plus brands, such as Behrouz Biryani, Ovenstory Pizza, Faasos, Mandarin Oak, Sweet Truth, etc., on its own proprietary operating system. It has a network of over 3,000 restaurants, 350-plus kitchens in 40-plus cities across four countries (India, the UAE, Indonesia and the UK), serving more than two million customers.

Wendy’s plans to expand its presence in India over the next decade in collaboration with its master franchisee Sierra Nevada Restaurants and Rebel Foods to open physical restaurants and cloud kitchens in the country.

A livemint report states that Rebel Foods, which is backed by Sequoia Capital, will partner with Sierra Nevada Restaurants to develop and operate 250 Wendy’s cloud kitchens pan-India, in addition to starting up another 150 Wendy’s brick-and-mortar restaurants.

The move comes at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the restaurant business globally, with diners reluctant to return to food joints operating under physical distancing protocols. This has led to a surge in takeaways and online food ordering through aggregators and restaurant websites, driving firms to enhance their online presence via cloud kitchens.

On its LinkedIn page, Rebel Foods claims to be the world’s largest chain of online restaurants. “Roughly five years ago, in 2015, we realised that 70 per cent of Faasos customers had never seen our stores, which is when we launched and eventually established a multi-brand, cloud kitchen model in India,” mentions the page’s description.

Rebel Foods also has partnerships with brands, like Mad Over Donuts, to enable them to achieve scale.

In India, Rebel Foods has partnered with Slay Coffee, and in the UK, with a brand called Holy Cow Curry Sauces. The company claims that the partnerships give it the ability to play across all customer food missions/occasions through the same infrastructure base.