Almost every week in the Rebel kitchen we get cases of ripe fruit delivered from the Philadelphia Wholesale Produce Market in Southwest Philly (it turns out that just a few miles from us is the biggest cold storage refrigerator in the country). Our job is to process the fruit (peel, wash, chop), put it in ziplock bags, and store it in our walk-in freezer. We call the fruit Rebel Icy Colors. We then deliver the fruit to 3...
Hi, my name is Nicolas Palmer. I will be telling you about Rebel's R&D (Research & Development) process. Steps step 1.) We broke up into groups. step 2.) We talked about what we would want as our new product. step 3.) We talked about who our target audience is. step 4.) We talked about where it could be sold. step 5.) What ingredients would be used? step 6.) How fast could it be produced and how many could be produced at a time? Zaire and...
I open my eyes early Tuesday morning to the loud sound of my alarm clock. It’s 8:30 am. I instantly thought to myself -- Time for Rebel Ventures. I got to the Netter Center for Community Partnerships around 10:50 am, where Jarrett and I were scheduled to have a meeting. My mind was racing with questions. “Will the other students he hired be there?” “What are we going to do in this meeting?” “I wonder what the...
Written by Mykel and Tre'Cia On Tuesday, my colleagues and I drove from West Philly to Media, PA to Wawa headquarters. We had plans to gain information on how to run a successful food business. On the van ride there we discussed our agenda, broke down roles and rehearsed our presentation for Wawa. When we arrived at the headquarters we signed in, received our name tags and waited to meet Jerry and Leslie, category managers at Wawa....
Rebel Ventures is a social enterprise run by high school students. We seek out partnerships to help us master skills in our departments. Our partners have expertise in a variety fields that are connected to the Rebel Ventures business. Working with partners is beneficial to Rebel because it's always good to learn from new people and because they have the experience to help us when we get stuck. Our partners come from all over our...
Rebel Ventures is a business and a social enterprise. All social enterprises are businesses, but not all businesses are social enterprises. Let's start simple. What is a business? A business sells a product to a customer. Usually this is something the customer wants or needs, and solves some type of problem the customer has. What are some of your favorite businesses? How about your favorite products? What problems do they solve? Rebel Ventures sells healthy snacks like Rebel Bars...
This week I did a sampling of Rebel Bars and Rebel seeds at Mariposa Food Coop, one of our first and most loyal customers. We just started selling our Rebel Seeds so, I was there to let everyone who came by know about us. While interacting something that really stood out was a guy who worked at a high school and wanted to know if we were hiring so maybe some students from his school...
Taking the "21" from 33rd and Walnut is a Tuesday pleasure unlike any other. It's a physical journey from the familiar corners of University City to West Philadelphia, whose simple beauties on 48th street I'm coming to know. There's a family I always see of three bright boys and a patient mother that board the bus as I descend from it. There's a group of young girls in crisp uniforms and color hair clips sing songs...
Last week I went into the supermarket and went down an aisle filled with different types of granola bars. There were different color boxes and different shapes. I came upon this one box that stood out from the rest . It stood out to me because it was simple and I really liked how you could see the bars in the box. I got the idea that my co-workers and I should come up with a...
Last Sunday, we went on a road trip to pick up some honey from our dear friend Walt. Honey is an important ingredient in our bars. At Rebel Ventures we use local organic ingredients and walt is just the right person. There in Kennett Square PA is where walt lives with his bee's. Walt is genuine person and is confident about his more than 5,000 bee's. During our time here a member of Rebel, Corey,...
