Food manufacturing · School nutrition
Rebellyous Foods
A Seattle company that builds the machines that make plant-based chicken, and sells the chicken mostly into school cafeterias. In the last week of 2025 its third-generation line ran continuously for the first time.
Two days without stopping
In the final week of December 2025, inside a food processing plant in Stanwood, Washington, a small crew started a machine and then left it alone.
Dry plant protein went in. Hydrated protein, an oil and water emulsion, and a finished dough came out, without a batch ever being scooped, tipped or scraped. The line ran two days across multiple shifts, scaling its rate up and down in real time to match whatever the forming and breading equipment downstream could take.
That is a modest-sounding sentence, and it is the whole company.
“It was a momentous final week of 2025 to see that plant-based meat can be made fully continuously, automated in high volumes and with considerably reduced labor compared to conventional methods,” founder and chief executive Christie Lagally Bradburn told a Seattle neighborhood paper a week later.
The problem is the machine, not the recipe
Almost every plant-based nugget on the market is made on equipment designed for animal meat: bowl choppers, tumblers, conveyor belts. The dough is mixed in batches. Hydrate textured vegetable protein, separately combine oils, water and starches, then fold the two together.
Each step fights physics. The more water the protein absorbs, the more the pile squeezes water back out, capping batch size. Mixing generates heat, so producers add ice or chill the whole room. A share of every batch stays stuck to the mixer walls.
The cost shows up at the register. The Good Food Institute puts plant-based pricing at two to four times conventional counterparts per pound. That is the gap Rebellyous set out to close, not with a better recipe but with different steel.
An engineer who left the 777X
Christie Lagally was an engineering lead on Boeing’s 777X program and holds patents from that earlier career. She was later a senior scientist at the Good Food Institute, then founded Seattle Food Tech in 2017. It took the Rebellyous name in 2019 and went through Y Combinator’s Summer 2018 batch.
Her framing has not moved since. “If you walk into a typical plant-based meat production facility, it would be exactly the same equipment as you would see in a typical meat processing facility,” she said in 2022.
Why the cafeteria
The first district customer was San Ramon Valley Unified in Northern California, in autumn 2020. By April 2022 there were 46 districts, by late 2023 more than 200, by autumn 2024 over 275 and four million students. By mid 2025 the company said more than 390 districts and over five million students.
School food is an unglamorous market with one attractive property: the buyer is ruthless about price and cannot be charmed. “School lunch has been a fantastic place for us because it’s a good match for our model of price parity and profitability,” Lagally said in 2023.
It is also a market with paperwork. Selling into the National School Lunch Program means a school food authority has to document how much of the meal pattern a product credits. There are two accepted ways to do that, and which one Rebellyous uses is the most checkable question about this company.
Three machines in eight years
The Mock 1S prototype passed functional tests in April 2022 with five applications pending. The Mock 2, rated at 2,500 to 5,000 pounds an hour, went in during September 2024 at RMS Foods in Hobbs, New Mexico, because Rebellyous had no room for it in Seattle. Mock 3 went commercial in Stanwood in December 2025, rated above 5,000 pounds an hour.
“Thanks to the extra time and money we invested in the Washington state facility, the Mock 3 system now works perfectly,” Lagally Bradburn said in January 2026. The company says it stays with RMS Foods as a co-manufacturer for the southeast.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| US patents | Eight granted US patents assigned to Seattle Food Tech, Inc.: 11432564, 11606959, 11871766, 11890587, 12004536, 12075798, 12102101 and 12426611, granted between September 2022 and September 2025. Claims cover continuous protein hydration and continuous emulsify-and-mix dough production. | Public record |
| Patent count as stated | Company says Mock 3 is covered by 14 US and international patents with six pending. Eight are the US grants above. Foreign family members do not show in a US assignee search, so the figure is unverified, not contradicted. | Company-stated |
| USDA Child Nutrition label | Neither Rebellyous nor Seattle Food Tech appears in the USDA CN Label Verification Report or the CN Label Manufacturers Report, both dated September 4, 2026. The company holds no CN label on that record. | Public record |
| What that does and does not mean | USDA states the CN Labeling Program is voluntary and that products served in child nutrition programs are not federally required to carry a CN label. The accepted alternative is a manufacturer’s Product Formulation Statement. A CN label carries a warranty against audit claims; a Product Formulation Statement does not. | Public record |
| Crediting claim | Company states its K-12 items “meet USDA NSLP guidelines and provide 2 Meat/Meat Alternate Credits,” and that all seven SKUs qualify. No CN identification number is published for any product. | Company-stated |
| SEC filings | Four Form D notices under Seattle Food Tech, Inc., CIK 0001807097, dated 2020 (two), 2023 and 2025. Amounts sold total $35,552,000. Two single-company vehicles also filed. | Public record |
| Announced versus filed | On February 3, 2023 the company announced a $9.5M equity round. The Form D filed that day reports $20,321,630 sold from 55 investors out of $30,734,497 offered. TechCrunch flagged it the same day. No amended notice since. | Claim differs from filing |
| Federal grants | No NSF or NIH award found under either name. The machine program appears to have been paid for with equity. | Not found |
| Contract values | No district contract amounts, unit prices or award notices found in public procurement records. District counts come from the company. | Not found |
| Financial position | Company reports 30 percent sales growth in 2025, sales in 45 states, and break-even with some cash flow positive months. Unaudited. | Company-stated |
Read plainly: the engineering is real and the patent record backs it. The commercial story rests on the company’s own numbers, which no filing or procurement record corroborates. And the most load-bearing regulatory claim, that the products credit toward federal school meal patterns, rests on documentation other than a USDA CN label, because the company is not on that list. That is permitted. It is also worth a buyer asking about.
What to watch
- Whether a CN label appears on a future monthly USDA verification report, which would swap a Product Formulation Statement for a federally warranted crediting statement.
- A Form D for the $3.5 million reported in November 2025. None had been filed as of September 24, 2026.
- Whether Mock 3 capacity at Stanwood gets sold to third parties. Licensing or tolling has been called “not off the table.”
- Whether break-even holds across a full school year rather than in some months.
- Named district contracts with published values.
In their words
“If you walk into a typical plant-based meat production facility, it would be exactly the same equipment as you would see in a typical meat processing facility.”
Christie Lagally, founder and CEO, The Spoon, 2022 · Independent
“We’re seeing high growth because we’re hyper focused on a market that really wants to replace meat on a large scale, which is our school districts, and we keep our prices very close to what schools can pay for animal meat, so we’re very attractive to schools.”
Christie Lagally, AgFunderNews, 2023 · Independent
“Such a huge majority of consumers will totally replace their chicken if they can just get that price point there.”
Christie Lagally, Food Dive, 2023 · Independent
“Thanks to the extra time and money we invested in the Washington state facility, the Mock 3 system now works perfectly.”
Christie Lagally Bradburn, to GeekWire, January 2026 · Independent
“No longer is alt-meat only available to those who can afford premium products.”
Tina Meredith, chief business officer, January 2026 release · Company release
“We didn’t know what to expect when we added Rebellyous Nuggets to our menu, but they have quickly outperformed many of our most popular menu items.”
Dan Mitchell, director, Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District, company website · Company-published
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordCN Label Verification Report and CN Label Manufacturers Report
- Public recordCN Labeling Program rules and FAQ
- Public recordUS patents 11432564, 11606959, 11871766, 11890587, 12004536, 12075798, 12102101, 12426611
- Public recordForm D notices, Seattle Food Tech, Inc., CIK 0001807097
- Public recordForm D, True VC, LLC, Series 6, Rebellyous
- Public recordForm D, The Helm x Rebellyous Foods
- IndependentThis plant-based chicken startup is bucking alt-protein trends
- IndependentRebellyous Foods raises $2.4M
- IndependentRebellyous accepts RFPs for processing system
- IndependentPlant-based meat by numbers
- IndependentProduction milestone after $3.5M raise
- IndependentRebellyous raises $9.5M to build its chicken tech
- IndependentRebellyous is raising millions to rethink the nugget
- IndependentSeattle startup launches automated system
- IndependentMock 3 production system launch
- CompanyDeployment of Mock 2 technology
- CompanyRebellyous Foods raises $9.5M equity round
- CompanyVizient contract for plant-based chicken
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
