Recipes to go with this Week's Grocery Bag: 12/22

We’re trying something new where we archive the weekly recipes we curate with our grocery bags.

If you’re new here, learn more about our grocery bags here.

This week’s recipes:

Stock up on Add-ons!

You can find just about every essential in our expanded selection of add-ons. Take a browse and see what's new!

We've recently added Peanut Butter, which you should absolutely snag to pair with your bananas. I'm here to remind you of a classic breakfast/snack/dessert: a schmear of PB on our sandwich bread (another add on!) topped with some bananas. Simple, but satisfying!

Our housemade vegetable and chicken stocks are concentrated and super flavorful, perfect to ramp up the depth of flavor of just about any savory dish. (FYI: You've tried the chicken stock in our Matzo Ball Soup.) This week, they'll elevate your cabbage in a sweet and sour braised red cabbage. As the recipe says: "It’s a set-it-and-forget-it dish, which makes it an ideal holiday side."

Stuffed peppers are an easy but impressive dish you can concoct with nothing more than this week's produce and add-ons. Your peppers will do their best work accompanied by our (newly stocked!) rice and Deep Roots Farm ground beef. You can mix in some canned beans for good measure and top with our Cabot Cheddar!

Let your fresh herbs have their moment in this simple lemon parsley pasta. This looks amazing for an astonishingly simple comfort meal. Add-ons: Grated parm, olive oil, any of our pastas (tagliatelle would be great!)

🥗All the Salad🥗

If you're not super familiar with Kohlrabi, we're excited for you to get to know this awesome veggie! It's a relative of cabbage, and its name actually comes from the German for "cabbage turnip" . Like it's cousin, it's a member of the brassica family, which is a term you might recognize from last week, since spigariello kale is in the same genus. The tops of your Kohlrabi the tops taste vegetal like kale, while the bulb tastes crisp and fresh. Try it out in a Kohlrabi Caesar! Perfect opportunity to buy/whip out our favorite kitchen gadget, the Japanese mandoline, and use the julienne blade for the kohlrabi bulb. Add-ons: Grated parm, dijon mustard

Your iceberg lettuce this week is an invitation to make a bomb wedge salad. I think you have two routes you can take here:

This minimalist, lettuce-forward version, lets the iceberg do its thing under a rich bacon fat vinaigrette. Recipe from one of our favorite restaurants in Brooklyn! Add-ons: Applewood bacon, dijon mustard

This fully loaded iceberg salad brings on the toppings (and clears out your fridge). Add-ons: Applewood bacon, Beans or Chickpeas

Your blood oranges will be great as the ~something sweet~ in a fancy salad. How about a blood orange and carrot salad or an orange and pomegranate salad to rock the assortment you're getting this week?

️Substantial Sides️

This Carrot Tart is a showstopper that also happens to be exceptionally easy. When I've made this one, everyone finds it wildly impressive... but the secret is that it only takes 15 minutes max active time.🤫

Another impressive holiday-friendly treat, Hasselback potatoes are a crispy, decadent way to use your potatoes. Add-ons: Grated parm, heavy cream

Craving something sweet?

Papaya is great in smoothies. Just cut your fruit into chunks, freeze, and whizz it up with banana and oat milk for a wholesome but sweet treat!

These papaya bars look like an exciting spin on lemon bars. Super intrigued by this concept -- I just might start making everything into bars!

Recipes to go with this Week's Grocery Bag: 12/15

We’re trying something new where we archive the weekly recipes we curate with our grocery bags.

If you’re new here, learn more about our grocery bags here.

This week’s recipes:

Note: Due to supply chain issues, we’ve substituted lacinato kale and butternut squash for their cousins in some of your bags this week. We think they’re delicious substitutes, but if you’re unhappy, drop us an email. Thanks!

💚 WHAT IS SPIGARIELLO KALE? 💚

Also known as "leaf broccoli," this heirloom variety is blowing my mind. It's a mix between kale and broccoli (!), and, like them, is also a member of the Brassica family. It has sweet, pleasant, kale-like leaves, in addition to tender stalks that are almost like broccoli rabe (but less bitter). I'm so excited to cook with this ingredient and get to know it better! I paired it with the broccolini thinking they'd sauté well together with some garlic, red pepper flakes and squeeze of lemon. Let us know what you think.

✨🐟 LOVE LETTER TO CANNED TUNA 🐟✨

Have you tried Ortiz’s canned tuna yet, which we have available as a pantry add-on? It is velvety, savory, and all-around SO FRIGGIN' GOOD! I don't like canned tuna at all, but this is canned tuna you'll convert for. It's packed in oil, so it's flaky and moist but not mushy. Yes, it is like 4x the cost of Starkist. Starkist can't do much more than swim in mayo, though. Ortiz tuna is line-caught off the coast of Spain -- turns out old-school fishing is more sustainable, reduces by-catch fish and creates jobs! Ortiz will rock a Niçoise salad, it will make a beautiful pasta sauce.

There’s plenty to be done with canned tuna, but one of my favorite ways to eat it is on a piece of good bread as a simple snack. A loaded Niçoise Toast is an awesome upgrade to that! Niçoise EVERYTHING. Just saying it feels posh af.

When it comes to weeknight dinner, canned tuna will always have your back. This tuna pasta looks like a quick, nourishing, and absolutely delicious recipe. Add-ons: Canned tuna, any of our pastas, olive oil, capers

It also whips up into a killer tonnato sauce, which would rock on top of your veggies. Take inspiration from this Charred Broccoli with Tonnato, but sub in your broccolini or spigariello kale! Add-ons: Canned tuna, grated parm, olive oil

🍽️ COMFORTING WEEKNIGHT MEALS 🍽️

So it’s finally really feeling like winter, and all I want is something warm and comforting. A creamy, savory Tomato and Parmesan Risotto would absolutely hit the spot these days, so I’m really excited to put my plum tomatoes to use in this dish! Add-ons: Arborio rice, grated parm, tomato paste, olive oil

Do you have leftover Flageolet beans from last week? Grab your plum tomatoes and onion and whip up these beans in tomato vinaigrette for a perfectly creamy, acidic concoction that keeps very well (bonus!), per the reviews. You can also make this with our canned white beans, which would make the dish practically instant 🤯 Add-ons: Canned white beans, olive oil

Another bean concoction, these Crispy Mushrooms with Creamy White Beans and Kale look exceptional. So texturally interesting, savory, and a great way to spotlight your shiitake mushrooms and spigariello kale. You can add your broccolini in along with the kale! Add-ons: Canned white beans, olive oil

All you need is some exceptional seasoning to make your little gem lettuce shine, and this Creamy Avocado Dressing is just the thing. With a little effort, you’ll be blessed with side salads all week 😊 (Which you can top with canned tuna, since you already know we’re obsessed) Add-ons: Olive oil

🍦WHAT'S FOR DESSERT?🍦

Banana Nice Cream might be trendy, but it’s also a total game changer: Creamy, delicious, and beyond simple. Why not whip up this Pumpkin Banana Nice Cream with your honeynut squash instead, and see if it changes your life as much as it did ours? You can halve your squash, roast at 350F for 30-40 minutes until it’s tender, and then blend it in the food processor to make your purée.

And here’s another approach: Frozen mango blends up with coconut milk for an awesome mango nice cream. Add-ons: Coconut milk

Recipes to go with this Week's Grocery Bag: 12/8

We’re trying something new where we archive the weekly recipes we curate with our grocery bags.

If you’re new here, learn more about our grocery bags here.

This week’s recipes:

SALAD IDEAS 🥗

Radicchio livens up any salad with its bright color and sharp bite. If you still have fennel from a few weeks ago (mine's still in good shape!) you should try this Radicchio, Fennel & Apple salad. If you don't, then try this one with Radicchio, Toasted Hazelnut & Capers. (FYI We now carry capers in our bodega! Capers are so usually pricey and come in tiny jars, but not ours. Caper lovers need to pounce on this deal!)

The Persian Cucumbers are seedless and have a thin edible skin, perfect for salads. So you can just dice this joint with some tomatoes & red onions from last week's bag, rough chop a ton of parsley, and add a few avo slices. That's a salad! To make this go even further, I'd grab a bag of farfalle pasta and turn the whole shebang into a pasta salad with balsamic vinaigrette.

SLOW & EASY COOKIN' ON WEEKDAYS

If you're WFH, you've got all the time in the world to dump something in the pot or oven and let it ride for a few. Here's a few ideas we'll work on this week:

Anytime I get beets in a bunch, my mind goes to risotto. This recipe makes good use of the beet roots as well as the greens, which remind me of Swiss chard (but way better because buying Swiss chard and watching it cook into nothing always makes me feel ripped off...) We have the arborio rice & grated Parm you'll need in our add-ons! This recipe would go so well alongside some roasted chicken from Deep Roots Farm... just an idea!

I've been craving meatballs. I tend to wing my meatballs at home based on what I have on hand, but it always involves sautéed onions & garlic plus breadcrumbs in the mix to stretch the meat and create a uniform texture throughout. This week, I'll be trying this recipe for Meatballs with Romesco Sauce with some tweaks. I'll be using ground beef from Deep Roots Farm instead of lamb, adding roasted eggplant to the mix (sneaky veggies!) and kicking up the romesco with a dab of our housemade hot harissa. (BTW our housemade harissa changed my life. Let us know how you like it!)

Flageolet beans are dreamy & creamy and easy to cook from dried; all you need is time. This recipe from the Barefoot Contessa for Flageolet beans with bacon reminds me of cassoulet a bit. Eat it with some crusty bread and roasted sausages or chicken legs!

The purple cauliflower & potatoes are a dynamic duo. Roast them, mash them, or soup them (my top reco). With creamy soups, I enjoy a crispy garnish for textural contrast -- how about frying some crispy shallots/onion strings or making parsnip chips if you still got them from last week?

WHAT'S FOR DESSERT?

Maybe some of y'all are drowning in bananas as I respond to others' requests for more hand fruit. If you've got too many on hand, how about freezing them and making "nice cream"? This caramelized banana nice cream sounds super nice, and if you don't have almond butter, you can try it with regular ol' PB.

Recipes to go with this Week's Grocery Bag: 12/1

We’re trying something new where we archive the weekly recipes we curate with our grocery bags.

If you’re new here, learn more about our grocery bags here.

This week’s recipes:

The theme here is low effort, high payoff!

🥑ALL THE TOASTS Every move here starts with our sandwich loaf.

Try making a roasted garlic hummus using canned chickpeas and olive oil from our pantry and substitute a bit of peanut butter if you don't have tahini or sesame seeds to make some at home. Top your toast with hummus, roasted carrots and radish green pesto.

Do a quick pickle with the radishes, then smash your avo with lemon and salt, and halve your heirloom grape tomatoes before dressing them with lemon, parsley, olive oil and salt. Spread the avo on toast, then top with the tomatoes & pickled radishes. (FYI if you add slices of red beet to the pickling radishes, they'll come out funky & pink!)

Another way to top your avo toast: We are loyal to this vegan-friendly kimchi from Chi Kitchen!

Cut the delicata into rings and roast them in the oven. You can rinse the squash seeds, dry them with paper towel, toss with oil and salt, and roast them too! Spread some caramelized onion cream cheese on your toast and top with the delicata rings & toasted seeds. Finish with a tangle of watercress greens, a drizzle of sesame oil and a squeeze of lemon.

EASY PASTA DISHES

Ok the radish green pesto is a total power move for those who know/game changer for those who don't. Once you see it, it can't be unseen. Use this recipe as a guide and improvise with whatever nuts you have on hand. If you have garlic, lemons, olive oil and grated Parm, you can improvise this! You can sauté the red onions & little tomatoes before combining fun shapes of pasta with the sauce & veggies. If you have leftover sauce, put it in a glass jar and top with a thick layer of olive oil before storing in the fridge. It'll last longer.

Tagliatelle with mushrooms & prosciutto (or bacon!) sounds so good right now! We have the right noodles, the heavy cream and butter you need and the grated Parm that the recipe did not call for but we feel is quite welcome. If you have herbs from last week's bag, the thyme goes here!

The only thing that would make this Lemon Garlic Asparagus Pasta dish better is seasoned & toasted breadcrumbs (kinda like the ones here) and grated Parm! We suggest using penne pasta or spaghetti for this one.

️BRUNCH AT HOME

This brussels sprouts hash & eggs sounds super easy and comes together in 1 pan. We would augment it with diced potatoes or even sweet potatoes! Grab a dozen Pat's Pastured eggs from our fridge too. Squeeze a lemon and top with grated Parm. (Sorry, we just love a sprinkle of cheese on everything.)

Brown Butter Banana Bread: the 4 B's they never taught me in Business School. Brown butter is easier than it sounds. We have yogurt. You can do this! I wanna know what happens if you add the blueberries here, like a banana bread & blueberry muffin mashup. Let me know if you try it.

Blueberry Pancakes and crispy bacon will hit the spot for a lot of us! I learned a hack for making the batter fluffier: Separate the egg whites and whip them into stiff peaks, assemble the rest of the batter using the egg yolks, and then fold in the egg whites as the final step for making the batter. Kinda like making sponge cake. Or, you know, make the recipe as written.

Taking a pulse on your Thanksgiving needs!

It seems like just about everything is changed this year, and the holidays are no exception. With that in mind, it doesn’t feel quite right to do our normal Thanksgiving routine without checking in on your plans. 

We’d love to get a sense of what you all want to see from us this Thanksgiving, so we’ve put together a quick survey. Please fill it out and tell us what we can do for you this holiday season, and you just might find a coupon code hidden at the end 👀 !

We have a few interesting ideas this year. We’re exploring the concept of larger sized grocery bag to feed 4-6 people, including staples for Thanksgiving dinner with recipes for the most popular Thanksgiving side dishes. We’re also trying to gauge the level of interest in buying pre-made treats, like pies and take-and-bake sides.

We really appreciate any input you can give — Thank you so much for being our eager & willing guinea pigs!

Recipes to go with this Week's Grocery Bag: 11/10

We’re trying something new where we archive the weekly recipes we curate with our grocery bags.

If you’re new here, learn more about our grocery bags here.

This week’s recipes:

I love the idea of making Cauliflower Kale Hummus Bowls for a modular weeknight dinner that lends itself to some exceptional leftovers. You can make the hummus and roasted veggies in advance and just combine to serve. Send your loaded hummus bowls over the top by roasting some eggplant, ground beef, or anything else you're craving! Add-ons: ground beef, olive oil, chickpeas

Back in September, Milena wrote about her obsession with the Celery Caesar Salad from Coppa in Boston: "They haven't shared their recipe, but you can work with this knock-off and make it your own. You can achieve killer textural contrast by working with the delicate inner stalks and using the outer, crunchy stalks for ribbons or cut on the bias skinny-skinny! Use our sandwich bread for croutons, too." Add-ons: sandwich bread, grated parm

ALL THE GREENS

Dandelion greens are an offbeat selection that works as well in salads as it does cooked. The taste is slightly bitter & peppery, similar to arugula. Here is some Dandelion Green inspiration with a myriad of options on how to use these tasty, nutritious greens. I will be using mine in a frittata, maybe with my potatoes!
I love to make Korean Scallion Pancakes from my scallions. In quarantine, everyone was regrowing scallions, which is a great trick to make sure they're always on hand! 🤯
Make the most of your Green Curry Paste with a Green Curry, of course! Use the technique from this recipe, but choose any veggies you like, including eggplant, green beans, and potatoes! Add-ons: Coconut milk, Tofu

Sounds crazy, but it ain't: You can make a silky, rich, and nourishing green smoothie out of your avocado and banana. You don't really need a recipe for this, but I found one for you here anyway! This one uses your kale for an earthy nutrient boost. You got kale too!

CANT BE BEET

These Beet Burgers are vibrant, delicious, and so, so easy. Add-ons: burger buns, tofu

Look at the color on this bright pink Beet Risotto! Add-ons: Arborio Rice

THE PEAR-FECT DUO

We're giving you two different fruits this week you might not know much about: Hachiya persimmons and Seckel pears. Amazing Fall fruits and luxurious, hard-to-find treats. Both the rich, beautiful persimmon and the tiny, very sweet pears should be eaten when fully ripened, so let them sit on your counter until juicy and soft. You should have enough of these for snacking, or to make a few wonderful galettes!
COMFORTS TO EASE A STRESSFUL WEEK Shepherds Pie is the epitome of cozy, homey, and easy food. You can add whatever veggies you like in here, like your green beans, or any carrots you have left over from last week. Garnish with chives like a top chef, baby! Add-ons: ground beef, bacon

A nice restorative soup sounds great as we reach the middle of a difficult autumn. How about Patricia Well's Pistou Soup? Or a super simple, leek-packed Chicken Soup. Add-ons: white beans, eggs

An update about our Back-to-School Fundraiser Campaign

Hi friends!

Back in September, we asked our community to get involved with our 2nd annual fundraiser to benefit our neighbors across the street at MLK Jr. Elementary School. You can read more details here!

We are so pleased to report that, with your support, we managed to meet our fundraising goal of $6,400 for a back-to-school kit for every single one of the 640 students at MLK! Our community raised $3,680 through purchase of the $10 Back-to-School Kits on our online store, and we topped off the pot with $2,720 from our Rebelle piggy bank. We want to take care of our community as much as you’ve all taken care in supporting us. In austere times like these, being generous and sharing what we have pays outsized dividends!

What’s next: Sohini, our friend at the MLK PTO, sourced some dope abstract art from the children at MLK, which our friend & Rebelle resident artist Karli Hendrickson will turn into cool postcards. As promised, we’ll be mailing these out as a thank-you to everyone who participated in our fundraiser with a monetary or mask donation. Spread the good vibes, baby!

We are deeply grateful to everyone who gave us their attention, shared the campaign and made a contribution. Special thanks go out to the team at Kreatelier on Hope Street, who donated a big batch of child-sized masks for our drive. Thank you!

Recipes to go with this Week's Grocery Bag: 10/27

We’re trying something new where we archive the weekly recipes we curate with our grocery bags.

If you’re new here, learn more about our grocery bags here.

This week’s recipes:

You see a recipe for Coconut Braised Chickpeas & Broccoli, I see the perfect weeknight dinner. Add ons: Coconut Milk, Chickpeas

This Smashed Cucumber Salad is so easy, delicious, and refreshing.

🥒  WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR ZUKE 🥒 

This Marinated Zucchini looks so delicious and would be killer with some of our brioche bread, grilled. You can use Greek yogurt instead of ricotta to add some refreshing tang! Add ons: Greek Yogurt, Sandwich Bread

Do you have leftover beluga lentils from last week's bags? Make Zucchini Lentil Fritters with lemon yogurt! Add ons: Greek Yogurt

This  Zucchini Bread is SUCH a classic! Perfect for an anytime snack... or breakfast...

THE MISO SECTION 

A Miso Glazed Eggplant sounds like pure umami goodness, and will use your scallions and cucumber. Put it over any carb -- I want this in pasta!

This Sweet Potato recipe with scallions includes a miso sauce that would be a knockout over any roast veg. If you don't have tahini, you could experiment with another nut butter.

These charred, savory Miso Brussels look so simple and tasty!

Use this Miso Squash technique on your Kabocha Squash for some savory-sweet deliciousness. Would be so good in a quick salad over your little gem lettuce!

Us launching our fish collab and giving you miso in the same week is the universe telling you to make some Miso Glazed Fish STAT! Salmon is a classic, but this technique would work on anything -- What about the white, flaky & sustainable Hake?

Use your miso, mushrooms, and veg to make a Miso Ramen to impress your friends and family. You can top with a protein: tofu would be amazing! Add ons: Tofu

PINEAPPLE TIME

Whip up a quick Pineapple Fried Rice with your Thai basil and veggies!

This Pineapple Carrot Cake includes a cream cheese frosting, which is your opportunity to use our Maple Cream Cheese for the world's best topping. SO excited to try this tip out myself :) Add ons: Maple Cream Cheese!

️ SPREADS & TOPPINGS ️ 

Add some DIY heat to your dishes with a Homemade Sriracha! When making hot sauce, Milena advises to add plenty of acidity and salt as preservatives, and more sugar than you'd expect to counteract their kick.

Make Kabocha Butter from this pumpkin butter recipe for a really special, rich treat. This will be just incredible over Greek yogurt or on toast! 

Recipes to go with this Week's Grocery Bag: 10/13

We’re trying something new where we archive the weekly recipes we curate with our grocery bags.

If you’re new here, learn more about our grocery bags here.

This week’s recipes

Stir fry your snap peas, carrots, peppers, onions, and bok choy! This is one of the quickest, most adaptable meals out there. You can throw in your ginger or herbs if you like, or top off your veggies with a protein like tofu. You can't go wrong! Add-ons: Tofu

Easy sides like this Cucumber Tomato Salad are game changers for me. Just chop and toss together your cucumber, tomato, and onion with herbs and dressing! I love to eat a refreshing salad at any meal, and this would be just as good with scrambled eggs for breakfast as it would be with a protein for dinner. Or add some croutons (or fried day old bagels?!?) and it transforms into a panzanella!

This awesome Red Cabbage Slaw mixes together your cabbage, peppers, and some bacon for another super easy, super delicious side! Add-ons: Applewood Bacon

Are you excited to try your gooseberries, but don't know exactly you'll use them? Me neither, which is why I'm psyched to discover this article on the best ways to enjoy a gooseberry. I can't wait to eat them on yogurt, and just enjoy some straight! Add-ons: Yogurt, Granola

Embrace the fall vibes with this stuffed acorn squash! This veggie focused main looks like the perfect way to stay warm and cozy as the weather gets chillier. Swap out the turkey and make it with our Italian sausage! Add-ons: Italian Sausage, Grated Parm

Speaking of the chilly weather, how warm and comforting does this Roasted Tomato BLT Soup look? Snag some of our Applewood Bacon and live your sandwich-as-soup dreams. You can use our sandwich bread as the garnish! Add-ons: Applewood Bacon, Sandwich Bread

I'll definitely be making these Curried Lentils with Coconut Milk out of my Beluga Lentils and ginger! I'm excited that we're including a legume in both the full and half share this week. This is such a great, vegetarian (vegan without the yogurt!) protein-packed main dish.

As a busy student, I absolutely love a good sheet pan dinner. So much reward for so little effort! Toss your fingerling potatoes in some oil and salt. Roast a chicken using Thomas Keller's technique, and throw the potatoes on the pan along with some thyme so that the whole meal cooks at once. While you're waiting on the dinner, why not braise your collard greens with some garlic and bacon on the stovetop?

Make the most of apple season with an Heirloom Apple Galette! You can follow the concept from our 9/15 recipes, subbing the pears for apples and the rosemary for thyme. 

FYI: We picked your apples ourselves from a local farm we're friendly with, and we've included some really cool heirloom varietals from 100+ year-old trees in your bags. We're big proponents of food sustainability, so we rescued fallen-but-still-good apples for us this week. If you notice some imperfections on your fruits, keep in mind that they're still delicious no matter how they look! 

The new era of Rebelle!

If you had told me in April that our pandemic-inspired Grocery Bag program would still be around in 6 months and that it would be growing and thriving, I would have laughed you out of the room. But we are getting really into it! I want to share with you a bit of what’s been motivating us to keep and grow this program. I hope you’ll be motivated to join in by purchasing a Grocery Bag this week.

Grocery Bags were one of the programs we whipped together out of thin air in the early pandemic days as a way to keep our team employed and busy. (You may remember us as one of the very few local businesses that stayed open continuously during the pandemic!) Darcy and I packed the first few bags and came up with a process for the team to take it over soon after. Every week since April, we’ve picked out a fresh assortment of produce to give you close to $50 worth of produce for only $40, plus recipe inspiration to make the most of your produce. We can give you killer value because everyone gets the same stuff and there’s little waste. We take advantage of our purchasing power as a restaurant, and you benefit as a customer.

Paying it forward, sharing is caring: We partnered with the Mt. Hope Community Center in our first week to support them with fresh produce twice a week, every single week. Your Grocery Bag purchase directly supports this effort. Everybody has to eat. 

We positioned the Grocery Bags as a limited-scope offering in the beginning of the pandemic, and we’re now changing our minds! We’re going to expand Grocery Bags and the whole Grocery situation at Rebelle. The feedback has been overwhelmingly encouraging on what we’ve done so far. I’m jazzed about it and I wanna get you jazzed too.

We’re getting ready to reopen soon as a bagel shop + bodega, inspired by the NYC neighborhood staple corner shops. Everything you know and love about Rebelle and our menu stays; our bodega is purely additive. We’re definitely not straying from our original vision to give you the best bagels in Rhode Island. But we have a lot of space that we pay rent on and we don’t foresee y’all packing it to the brim on a weekend for a little while longer. Let’s put it to better use!

Halfway through our BIG CHANGE!

We’ve reclaimed some of our front-of-house space and turned it from seating area to bodega space. We’ve invested in a glass-door fridge to showcase our fresh produce, milks & eggs. We’ll have shelves with our own breads that you fell in love with during the pandemic, granolas and other house-made products in addition to pantry staples. We’re starting small, and when we grow, I picture having a produce stand on the sidewalk and fresh flower bouquets from our local friends at The Floral Reserve.

I envision our neighbors stepping up to our bodega counter to order a bagged-to-order Grocery Bag (at their convenience! any time of the week!) and adding bagels, milk, eggs and whatever other staples to carry them through the week. And a bagel sandwich and coffee for breakfast while they’re at it!

The times are changing and I don’t see us going back to the way things were pre-pandemic. We can shape our future and choose what the new normal will be. As consumers, we have an opportunity to support the things we believe in with our dollars. I’ve always valued that about our Rebelle community and I’m honored that you choose us for your bagel needs.

Stop & Shop and Whole Foods are big companies betting that our inertia and desire for convenience is stronger than the will to make a change. These large companies don’t care about much more than earning their profits. Amazon invented (and patented!) one-click online shopping and now they own your local Whole Foods.

At Rebelle, we’re inviting you to support your local economy with every meal you cook at home and directly challenging you to break your old patterns that make these big companies bigger. We’ve sourced local eggs from Pat’s Pastured, local dairy from Wright’s Farm and local meats from Deep Roots Farm. And that’s only the beginning; we have more local partnerships in the works!

The Whole Foods founder has some really backwards beliefs about the diets of low-income households. He recently shared with the NYT:“Whole Foods has opened up stores in inner cities. We’ve opened up stores in poor areas. And we see the choices. It’s less about access and more about people making poor choices, mostly due to ignorance. It’s like a being an alcoholic.”  As a consumer, that’s one out-of-touch dude I don’t want to give my money to. Do you?

I know most of us don’t subscribe to these beliefs but we unconsciously support them with every purchase at WFM.

Making a change requires conscious effort. Come make a change with us!

Check out Jenna’s unbagging video to see what’s on offer this week. If you’re compelled by her (we love Jenna!) and want to get a bag, visit our website and use coupon CHANGE at checkout for $5 off your Grocery Bag. Pickups are Tuesdays and Thursdays 4-6pm. We still have pickups available for this Thursday!

Thanks for reading <3

Recipes to go with this Week's Grocery Bag: 9/29

We’re trying something new where we archive the weekly recipes we curate with our grocery bags.

If you’re new here, learn more about our grocery bags here.

This week’s recipes

Make a chicken chile verde! I love making chile verde in my cast iron pot and letting it age in the fridge a few days. This recipe uses pork shoulder and I support that choice, or you can order a whole chicken with your Grocery Bag and work with that! The chicken skins will render their fat into the stew and make it beautifully rich. Eat this with tacos or over rice & beans for a simple meal! Add-ons: whole chicken

Pickle your radishes for garnishing your chile verde and then make pesto with the radish greens! We love a good two-for-one recipe and there is no need to waste perfectly good radish greens. If you haven't tried them, radish greens are peppery like arugula. Our grated Parm makes pesto a super easy endeavor in your food processor. Add-ons: sugar, olive oil, grated Parm

We have two soup suggestions this week:French onion soup for the cooler weather is amazing. I suggest you caramelize onions in large batches (1 qt.) and keep them in the fridge as a zhuzhing agent for any recipe/sandwich you're slapping together... and that also puts you closer to a French onion soup in a pinch! Make a grilled cheese with our sandwich bread and sliced Cheddar to go along. Easy peasy lunch! Add-ons: sandwich bread, butter, sliced Cheddar

This Pumpkin soup with Mexican spices from Bobby Flay is one of my favorite soup recipes. Use the honeynut squash instead of pumpkin and substitute sour cream for creme fraiche if you need to! ROAST & BOWL! Roast the delicata squash, the romanesco cauliflower and the honeynut squash, add your caramelized onions, cut your apples and kale and make a beautiful fall harvest bowl! I love adding a cooked grain (farro, pearl cous cous or wild rice) or canned beans. That radish greens pesto could be really good here...

UP THE SNACK GAME with Stuffed Cremini Mushrooms! This fits into your Sunday Night Football vibe as well as it does for a classy cocktail night with friends at home. Try adding some Italian sausage to the stuffing! Add-ons: cream cheese, Italian sausage, butter

Recipes to go with this Week's Grocery Bag: 9/24

We’re trying something new where we archive the weekly recipes we curate with our grocery bags.

If you’re new here, learn more about our grocery bags here.

Please note: We’re only doing Grocery Bag pickups on Thursday 9/24 this week due to a team vacation Monday 9/21 thru Wednesday 9/23.

This week’s recipes:

Make your figs into jam! Fig jam is great on a cheese & charcuterie board or as a condiment for sweet & savory sandwiches. No recipe needed here, we're going to give you the golden ratio of jamming at home: 25g of sugar for every 100g of fruit. Cut up the fruits and cook with the sugar over med-low heat with a cover on. I let my jams go for 1-2 hours; you'll know it's ready when it reaches the right consistency after cooling. How to know? You can pour a spoonful of jam onto a chilled plate & cool it for a few minutes. Tweaks you can make: zest & juice a lemon into the jam; splash of bourbon or amaretto liqueur; sprig of rosemary. Add-ons: sugar

Make a honeynut squash & caramelized onion grilled cheese. HEYOOOOO our sandwich bread is SO. FRIGGIN, GOOD! Roast your squash (425F for 25 mins is always my baseline) and caramelize your red onions, then build a grilled cheese with our sliced Cabot Cheddar. Add-ons: sandwich bread, butter, sliced Cheddar

Cheesy Brussels sprout casserole: Cheese. Bacon. Brussels sprouts. This recipe could get away with murder. If you don't have bacon, we recommend trying Deep Roots' Italian sausage! Add-ons: Cheddar cheese, butter, heavy cream, Italian sausage

Blistered green beans with garlic: Green beans respond to aggressive heat really well. This would be a nice side on your plate with some simple steamed rice and a protein of your choice. Add-ons: olive oil

This recipe for Cheddar Broccoli soup looks like everything turned up to 11 in a great way. Another great recipe to use our sandwich bread as croutons! Add-ons: butter, yogurt, sliced Cheddar, sandwich bread

It's the season for sheet-pan dinners now that nights are cooling off! Try this Roasted Sausage with Fennel & Orange. We suggest also roasting your beets with this recipe!

Recipes to go with this Week's Grocery Bag: 9/15 & 9/17

We’re trying something new where we archive the weekly recipes we curate with our grocery bags.

If you’re new here, learn more about our grocery bags here.

This week’s recipes:

Honeynut squash is our new seasonal favorite squash (not to displace our ALWAYS fave, kabocha pumpkin). Look at this: The Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture, a nonprofit farm and education center in Pocantico Hills, New York, hosted a group of Cornell plant breeders in 2009. There, farm director Jack Algier asked Dan Barber, chef and owner of Stone Barns' restaurant Blue Hill to cook the plant breeders' products for the group. After dinner, Barber took Michael Mazourek for a tour of the kitchen. At one point in the tour, Barber grabbed a butternut squash and asked Mazourek "If you're such a good breeder, why don't you make this thing taste good? Why don't you shrink the thing?!" We enjoy the natural sweetness of this squash and recommend halving it lengthwise, rubbing with a neutral oil and roasting cut side down at high heat (425 for 25 minutes is always a good start for me).

Make some baba ganoush eggplant dip! If you're roasting the squash, take advantage of a hot oven and throw in your eggplant too. This recipe is vegan and can flex from snack time with bread or crudités, to a breakfast toast spread, to a lunch bowl topping. If you don't have tahini, I have ideas for you: try toasting a few fistfuls of sesame seeds and food-processing with the teeniest tiniest bit of oil for homemade tahini... or replace with peanut butter! 

This leek & kale lasagna sounds like a great idea. Execute as written, or if you're like me and feel overwhelmed by the thought of assembling a lasagna🥵you can turn it into a creamy pasta bake with breadcrumb topping. And braise your leek tops! Please don't throw them out :-(

If you have a bunch of red onions, pickle some! Keeping a quart of pickled onions in your fridge is handy for jazzing up salads, sandwiches & more. 

Feel like baking? Try pear & rosemary sugar galettes. If you have a favorite pie crust recipe, freestyle these up by cutting your crust into 9" rounds, piling up fruit in the middle and folding the edges inward to end up with a hexagon. Make rosemary sugar by dropping your herbs into a bowl of sugar and letting it sit for a few days. Sprinkle that stuff heavily on your galettes before baking, and you'll get a nice & sweet crunch coming out of the oven. 

Yes, you can make your own fresh tomato sauce for pasta night and it doesn't even take too long! Fresh tomatoes like sugar, salt and acid, and I like to keep that in mind whenever I make something tomatoey and saucy. Balsamic vinegar is a really rich way to get there, or you can try a squeeze of lemon and a heavy pinch of white sugar to keep the fresh flavor in the forefront. 

Recipes to go with this Week's Grocery Bag: 9/8

We’re trying something new where we archive the weekly recipes we curate with our grocery bags.

If you’re new here, learn more about our grocery bags here.

This week’s recipes:

Famed NYC chef & restaurateur Gabrielle Hamilton wrote this Tian recipe for the New York Times that made it into my morning reading list. It reads like a gorgeously written postcard! This ratatouille-esque dish is a killer move for using up your gold bar squash (delighted to see it again!) and grape tomatoes. Plus, this one is a heartbeat away from being vegan: just replace the butter with your preferred plant-based fat. Add-ons: extra-virgin olive oil, butter

Little Gem Lettuce is tiny, sweet, and crisp, like Romaine and Boston lettuce bred to give you their very best. We suggest making a simple salad, leaving the leaves whole or tearing with your hands into large pieces for minimal bruising. These babies are delicate! Try this Martha Stewart recipe with a walnut & shallot vinaigrette or this Nancy Silverton recipe with a lemon vinaigrette (swap the yellow squash for your gold bar and Pecorino for grated Parm!). Add-ons: grated Parm, extra-virgin olive oil

What's with the Moon Drop Grapes? They're just fun! We'll be throwing them in our little gem salad, halved lengthwise. You can also cook them into these Pork Chops with Grapes & Tarragon and finally try Deep Roots' pork chops, which we're absolutely gaga over! Add-ons: Pork chops, extra-virgin olive oil

We have two ways to try your cauliflower this week! First up: Cauliflower Mac & Cheese, which you can make with our sliced Cabot Cheddar for meltiness, grated Parm for sharpness and whatever other cheese scrappy bits you got in the fridge to make them disappear. This recipe doesn't call for pasta, but I say you go for the elbow macaroni and make the cauliflower go further. If cheesiness isn't in the cards, try this (vegan!) Spicy Cauliflower. We don't have an air-fryer, so we'll be roasting ours instead.  Add-ons: butter, flour, Cabot Cheddar, grated Parm, milk

Feel like baking? Try this Sweet Potato Tea Cake with Meringue from Tartine in San Francisco. I just love this hack to add a crackly meringue top to a cake! You can make it super-extra by topping it with halved & roasted figs. Add-ons: butter, eggs, flour, sugar

We're obsessed with the Celery Caesar Salad from Coppa in Boston. (If you're looking to escape the PVD bubble for an evening, call and reserve an outdoor table on a weeknight. Such a beautiful vibe in the South End!) They haven't shared their recipe, but you can work with this knock-off and make it your own. You can achieve killer textural contrast by working with the delicate inner stalks and using the outer, crunchy stalks for ribbons or cut on the bias skinny-skinny! Use our sandwich bread for croutons, too.  Add-ons: sandwich bread, grated Parm

The purple asparagus we all went bananas over is back! I love scoring a good deal for you. Don't fuss much with it: just cook it gently with a lemon & butter sauce. Smashed cucumber salads were all the rage a few summers ago, have you tried this technique? I love rice wine vinegar and sesame oil (PLEASE get the toasted kind for depth of flavor!). I might be bold enough to add some cubed-up green apples to this salad...

We’re one month into this CORONA thing!

Boy, Corona has been a wild, wild ride full of the highest highs and the lowest lows. Maybe you feel the same way: The littlest wins feel HUGE and amazing, and then the little annoying things you’d normally wave away totally overtake you. It’s rough running a restaurant these days! But through all that, we remain committed to being here for you, daily and without interruptions. Everybody has to eat! To our friends who have cheered us on with positive comments, sweet emails and beautiful artwork to cover our windows: THANK YOU!

Since we changed our operations on March 16, we’ve added a few services to serve you better and make up the loss in business caused by the pandemic. Necessity is the mother of invention! I want to share a bit of how our business has changed in the last month, one initiative at a time.

DELIVERY!

We’ve been offering weekend morning delivery to select zip codes for four weeks now! Sign up for our emails to learn more. On Friday, Saturday and Sundays, Milena & Darcy come early to bag up your orders and deliver them to your house by 9 am. For optimal routing, we serve different zip codes each day: Fridays are for Providence, Saturdays we go to East Bay, and Sundays for West Bay. When you get our weekly email announcing sign-ups, you can click through to ChowNow, choose delivery for the day that matches your zip code, and place your order. Please note that the delivery menu excludes sandwiches and bagels with cream cheese.

Because the actual delivery costs exceed the $5 delivery fee, we require a $40 minimum order to qualify for delivery. We know this may not fit the budget for every household. We suggest bundling orders with your neighbors to hit the minimum; we are also happy to welcome you seven days a week for a curbside pickup for orders in any amount!

Also: If your zip code is not on any of our routes, feel free to still reply and let us know you’re interested! We keep track of high-demand zips in case we can increase availability.

GROCERY BAGS!

When this all started, my fellow restaurant friend Chris and I were discussing the need for groceries. “We’ll never do it,” I said. Grocery stores run on 2-4% net margins, and they know how to sell groceries better than anyone! Of course, new information means we reflect and adjust. Grocery bags for pickup at our shop make sense as a way to reduce contact and avoid the stores. We just need to make sure we run tight on the numbers so we’re on the right side of those skinny margins. We’re good at that!

How it works: On Sunday night, we send an email with our Grocery Bag ingredients for the week. Each bag is $40 and includes enough plant-based groceries & fresh produce for a 2-person household. You can also add eggs, dairy, meats, our own breads (we’re testing slowly!) and plant-based alternatives. We choose thoughtfully, as we would for our own home: things that go well together, a few wildcards, and prioritizing the best-value buys at the moment. We also research a few recipe ideas and send them to all confirmed grocery friends!

Feedback on this has been GREAT so far. We’ve heard from you that the challenge of cooking with “mystery” ingredients is fun, the recipe ideas are great thought-starters, and you’re happy with the quality & quantity of food provided. Darcy and I have been taking a bag to share at home so we can understand and improve the customer experience for you.

This program is and will remain limited in scope. We have hardly any fridge space to support this, we’re not grocers anyway (maybe we should be?!) and we’ve received 2-3x demand for the supply on hand… so without a doubt, some of you will be empty-handed and disappointed. Please know that we do our best to respond swiftly to your email whether we have a bag for you or not. 

Also: With every bag purchased, you are subsidizing neighbors in need! This past week, we set aside 30 bags for the Mt. Hope Neighborhood Association and Camp St. Ministries to distribute to vulnerable households. These are community members who are part of high-risk populations or need help providing for themselves and their families. ICYMI: Many food pantries and community kitchens have closed or reduced services during these times due to multiple factors, among them lack of volunteers and disruptions to the food supply chain. So they need our help now more than ever. Consider a donation!

FAMILY MEALS!

This is the newest idea baby which we started testing last week! Juan and I are spending our afternoons cooking family-style meals for customers to pick up on Tuesdays & Thursdays 4-6pm, same time as grocery bag pickups. I never thought we’d do dinner at Rebelle, but HERE WE ARE! (I say that a lot these days…)

We’re picking themes: Taco Tuesdays and Thursday Night Pasta! These themes are versatile enough that we can riff on what we have in our fridge, but you also know what to expect. Each meal is $25, serves 2 people and includes cookies for dessert! We’re pushing ourselves to include plant-based options with every family meal—we’ve learned from you that the current constraints around access to food & restaurants are not friendly to plant-based friends (we see you!). I hope this helps bring some excitement to your plates!

Family Meals are currently on test mode, which means we are sharing it first via email with a small group of regulars who enjoy submitting themselves as guinea pigs for our work! Once we feel confident in this offering, we’ll roll out to everyone. Stay tuned for more!

---

We are super grateful to have your support these days. Yes, it’s been incredibly stressful, and we have been super open about the struggle. We’re open about everything we do, sometimes to a fault, and I wouldn’t have it any other way! This business is very personal, it’s mine, yours and ours, and I want to share our journey, detractors be damned. (I heard we’ve inspired some memes now, how exciting!) We have made the conscious choice to be here through this tough time, and to support and keep up every relationship we have formed with our customers, team members and suppliers. It’s not easy, it requires a lot of fortitude, and we are growing from the pain! We are as nimble as we have always been and getting even better. I used to dance when I was younger, and my teacher used to tell us to take whatever energy we had (anxiety, stress, happiness) and channel it into our performance, making sure to leave it all on the floor. That’s the spirit I am channeling these days, we come in daily to crush our performance and leave it all on the floor. We still got TONS to give you!

---

Before you go:

We’d love to know how you’re feeding yourself & your household these days—my eating habits have totally changed, and I’m sure yours have in some way or other! We love surveying our customers as a way to get direct and targeted feedback on the areas we want to improve. Your answers help us brainstorm ways to meet your needs, so more detail is better!

 Also tell me: What else are you interested in right now? Could be a product offering or even a topic you’d like to see featured in a blog post. It’s been hectic lately, but we’re paying attention to you, as we always are. Thank you for listening back!

Starting Monday: We're turning off lunch on weekdays!

Thank you for your support and words of encouragement so far! What a wild ride it is to continue daily operations during this period. We’re all still here for you. We’re trying our next move for a minute, so please entertain us:

Starting this Monday April 13, 2020: We’re serving sandwiches and prepared bagels until 11am only on weekdays. Sandwiches will not be available for order on ChowNow for pickups after 11 am. Weekend service is not impacted by this change.

We’re doing this so we can repurpose some labor hours to put towards interesting projects like deliveries, our grocery bags and other ideas for take home treats! Stay tuned, we have some ideas.

You can still pre-order food for the rest of the day! Bagels by the half/full dozen, spreads, deli items, pastries & drinks are all available until closing time.

In the meantime: please fill out this survey and help us learn about how you’re feeding yourselves these days!

I hope you’re staying cheerful at home. We miss you all but we still feel the love from a distance! (Drop us your love notes/fan art at the shop and we’ll tape them on our windows for everyone to enjoy!)

This ain’t no ordinary online ordering: a COVID week 1 update

What a wild ride of a week it has been. Last Sunday was such a shift for everyone. From Sunday to Monday, we transformed our strategy overnight to an online-only business. Online used to be <10% of our revenue, just so you know, and now it’s 100%. We knew how to do it at a low level and we did it well enough, but this is a totally new landscape. Maybe we’ve skipped a beat or two, but I am immensely proud of my team’s performance, as well as Darcy’s and mine. We have kept cool, kept ourselves at work and made the changes necessary to feed our customers in this new world. Weathering changes is all about having the right mindset and attitude; not to say that we live in denial! We are clear-eyed and focused on cutting through the panic to find our new normal. I don’t think we are going back to the way things were.

So, with those thoughts shared… I come to you with an update on the COVID-19 version of Rebelle! We are all learning from this experience, and I have learned a lot from your feedback about what things are easy, what things are confusing, and what things need to get dropped by the side of the road. Thank you. Here we go!

Things that are easy/good/working:

• Online ordering: on the whole it works. Orders come in and get fulfilled. You’ve been eating. We hear from you that it is by far the easiest online ordering platform. Yay!

• New operating procedures for the team: We have had to rethink roles for shifts and learn each role’s duties so we can fulfill orders efficiently. It is working well so far and we are improving daily. We literally wrote the duties for all roles onto a sheet and laminated it for each station. Anyone caught “trying to help” someone else is (figuratively) slapped on the wrist. We have to stay in our respective lanes until we have mastered the dance! Then we can criss-cross for efficiencies.

• We are putting out the good vibes on the ‘gram: I have never spent so much time on Instagram. It is definitely not my personal vibe but I can see that you respond to it and I love a good feedback loop. Our engagement is through the roof! Giving you content is feeding my creativity and allowing me to be a bit of a silly goose. Most days, I perform Serious Business Milena who is a stickler for the rules and holds high standards and crunches numbers. Not now! I love, love, love making people laugh and bouncing positive energy off of others. THANK YOU!

• Creative business strategy! When I am uncertain about the future, I go HARD AF. Let’s try everything (*everything that makes sense)! We tried delivering orders ourselves this weekend, which was a rollercoaster of fun and anguish. It reminds me so much of the hectic frenzy of the pop-up days in 2017. We want to do it again with some mods, but still: it is so much fun to give ourselves the space to do stuff that normally would get de-prioritized. Anything goes now! I love this game.

Things that are confusing:

• Confusing menu items: As of today, the item “Just a Bagel” is discontinued in favor of “BUILD YOUR OWN”. Those of you who want a single bagel with nothing done to it will have to work harder, because enough people are getting confused ordering and we want to be super sure. Executive decision *insert gavel slamming*. So many orders came in for single bagels for $2, and then people wrote in the notes that they wanted it prepared with cream cheese or something. People who want a bagel with cream cheese actually should order a “BUILD YOUR OWN” so that they are charged for the bagel AND the spread ($4) or whatever else they want done to it. We will mitigate confusion by removing choices. Perhaps the mods/additions also get whittled down a bit to get you on the right train of ordering, which means we can execute exactly what you order. Ask us any questions prior to ordering! Happy to help so we get it right on the first go.

• Communicating things that are moving in real time. Here’s what I imagine my emails sound like to people: “WE HAVE DELIVERY! […] DELIVERY IS CANCELED! […] ORDER AHEAD!” Sorry, y’all. I bet that is mega exhausting. There are too many right now: email, facebook, Insta posts, Insta stories, voice phone, text… I am brainstorming ways to find the most effective means of communicating. Stick by me.

• Online ordering with folks who are less Internet-savvy: I have seen more flip phones than a Metro PCS this week. I’ve met people who think email is the whole internet – I wish, we’d all have more time on our hands if that was true! We have done some video tutorials on Insta/FB story… but maybe the people on social media are the savviest anyway. For sure, for sure: cracking this nut is a priority for the coming week. We’ll be doing tutorials and FAQ’s across many media.

Things that need to be let go:

• The small things: Moments of crisis require absolutely focused energy. We cannot afford to waste any energy on getting off track, getting anxious, or getting wrapped up in a bad feedback loop. If we have disappointed you by not fulfilling a request: I am so sorry and I’ll have to live with that for now. We are doing our best to serve you! It is a different world today than the one we were working in last week.

• Slower-moving menu items: Salmon Salad, you’re fired! Slow mover! No time for you in our production schedule until further notice. Let’s come up with a different salad. Chicken salad? A tuna salad I don’t hate? I’m game!

• Any tasks that are not directly connected to our survival: Anything that doesn’t directly keep our team in good shape is not essential right now, sorry. Friends, I miss you! (My best friend Joey & his husband Casey drove from Boston today to order breakfast and I never saw them!) Sleep is on short supply, but still enough to restore the mind and body. Workouts are gone but long walks around 02906 are here. Love running into y’all around the neighborhood. Interviewing team candidates is on hold but you best believe I still read your resumes! That’s the new game. I wake up, I grind, I go to sleep. (Little Sister is like… crawling along. Bear with me, though, because it is going to be super cute in there.)

If you’ve read this far, maybe you will feel motivated by my words: Crises are moments that test us as leaders. What version of you will show up best? I have been watching with wild curiosity to see how others respond to the crisis. I’ve gotten some great ideas from talking to friends in other businesses. When everyone is looking to others for direction, there is an opportunity to lead – do we freeze in place, or do we figure out where to go? Day by day, I am pushing myself to lead and figuring out where is good for Rebelle to go. This is what keeps me showing up for you every morning. So far, the response is that we should keep going and the support is there. Thank you for trusting us!

Cheers!

View this post on Instagram

THIS TEAM. Holy shit, today was insane. This feels like the early days of Rebelle: absolute insanity, drinking straight out of the firehose. MIT prepared me well to expect the unexpected, and to be flexible & quick to adapt under pressure. To any customers with special requests who we did not accommodate — please accept my sincerest apologies! Under normal circumstances, we’d be much more willing to entertain wacky/one-off requests. But the game has changed, and we must change with it. We’re simplifying things a bit to manage the load better. Thank you for understanding & see you tomorrow SUNDAY!

A post shared by Rebelle Artisan Bagels (@rebelleartisanbagels) on Mar 21, 2020 at 11:09am PDT

How do we respond to Coronavirus? Pivot to online ordering only.

I am not alone in feeling like the past week has been insane. As the news outlets closer to home pick up and amplify their Coronavirus coverage, we have all been inundated with content. It’s been hard to sift through all of it and formulate a game plan, both on an individual, personal level and for the business. We have been taking it one day at a time so far and focusing on cleaning & sanitizing and spreading the love/mitigating anxiety. Now we are at a critical inflection point so we need a different plan. After MUCH deliberation, here’s my best game plan:

Effective Monday 3/16, we’re switching to 100% online ordering, packaged for take-out and brought to you for curbside pickup.

(BTW – we are fully expecting forced closures from the state at some point. Until then, we are here for you. We all have to eat.)

Here are the basics on how we plan on doing this

I want to tackle this first before I lose my readers’ interest, and then I’m happy to expound on reasoning, feelings, etc.

• Our online store is up and running, and if you’ve ordered with us before, you know the drill! (If you haven’t ordered before, good news: there is an automatic 10% discount off your first online order!)

• The front door will be locked :-( Because when we put up signs on the door, very few people read them. Locking the door usually gets y’all to read whatever sign we post. This one will have instructions for online ordering.

• There is a 15-minute expected wait for order fulfillment. We reserve the right to adjust as needed to set realistic expectations. Please plan accordingly.

• If we run out of a particular item/flavor, we may reach out via text to coordinate a substitution. Please be flexible if we suggest a substitution.

• For the moment, we will hand off orders at our front door. Please plan on walking up to our front door only once you have received notification that your order is ready. We are trying to be mindful of people’s desire to maintain some distance – y’all queueing up to wait outside defeats the point.

• Please consider tipping on your order! Every business owner I have talked to is worried about their employees’ livelihoods. This is a great way to show support for the people that make the magic happen, if you can afford it. I want to stress this so you do not get the wrong impression: Everyone will receive the same level of service regardless of how much/if they tip. If you are looking to send good energy into the world and can spare a buck or two, this is a good time.

• If you wanted to eat & chill with us but can’t anymore – consider the lawn across the street! Ain’t no better time for a picnic than the (almost) spring. Bring a blanket and a book or tunes, space yourselves out, and try to decompress from all this anxiety. We need some chillness. Check our Spotify profile for our tunes!

• Lastly: Let’s have some fun with it! We’ll be including random freebie cards with every order. Just so you have something to look forward to when we resume normal service. (We will! We will come back. I promise.)

Other businesses are closing down completely. Why aren’t we?

The short answer is, this is uncharted territory for all of us as a society! Everyone is reacting to this differently. I wanted to keep Rebelle going on-site (with all the obsessive sanitizing!) for those of us who really need human connection and distraction from an anxious world. I rationalized that if we are already going out for food, what is the harm in sitting for a few peaceful minutes to enjoy our breakfast? But after today, I sense peace is hard to find among others right now. Isolation is what brings people the peace they need. So here we are.

For some restaurants, opening in a limited capacity is not realistic. As a mostly take-out business, we can do 100% take-out with minor tweaks. I am down to try! I want to try before I opt to close down temporarily.

What happens if we decide/are forced to cease operations temporarily?

I have spent hours talking to other business owners on how they are handling this situation. There is very little guidance from our government, it feels. All the advice I have received is a bit different, but here is what we all share: concern for our team members. Hourly employees are not prepared for financial speed bumps and this is a universal reality of being an hourly employee. The state is allowing and expediting unemployment benefits for employees whose workplaces are under temporary shutdown. But unemployment is not enough to live on, and a bunch of people are about to claim their benefits. Maybe the system gets overwhelmed, idk. I feel a strong sense of responsibility over my team’s livelihood and I feel uncomfortable letting them go without a plan that feels solid.

Time to break the Rebelle piggy bank to help our team! In the event of a temporary closure, we are committing a full payout of accrued paid sick leave and paid time off for all employees who choose to cash it out as a supplement to unemployment. We are fortunate to have cash flow that allows for this type of employee goodwill. Thank you for supporting us to this point.

What we are doing to run as safely as possible

• Our sickness & time off policy has its time to shine right now! Part-time and full-time employees at Rebelle enjoy some form of paid sick leave and we are always happy to honor it. Employee health is monitored and we do our best to make calling out sick comfortable and stigma-free for the team.

• We continue to clean obsessively. We have plenty of sanitizing solution, bleach, various antibacterial detergents and hand soap. Plenty of you have expressed your gratitude for how clean we always keep the joint. We are prepared to clean all the things.

• We are keeping the good vibes going! Call it whatever you want to – I refuse to spiral into despair. I commit to you that, whatever I can do to brighten your day and put a smile on your face, I will do. I got into this business because I believe in feeding people and their spirits. We all still have to eat. Let’s try to have a little bit of fun while we can.

• We are reassessing daily. Look, if we run out of good vibes, if the team is anxious and stressed, if all hell breaks loose or the government orders a shutdown, then we will hang up our aprons for some period of time TBD. We will come back. I promise.

Some new greener practices at Rebelle

Back in August 2019, we put out our first BIG IDEAS survey and received 347 responses from committed long-time customers and newbies alike. We asked you to evaluate 15 ideas in terms of your level of interest: Do you wanna see us do more catering? (Not so much.) Do you want more plant-based menu options? (A third of you do!)

“More green options: packaging, composting, etc.” was the second most popular idea, with 57% of survey respondents backing it. I can see why! This is an urgent agenda item for a large portion of today’s society. Greening things up is a tough one for us because we are a high-volume, take-out friendly shop in a convenience-driven society. Single-use packaging is largely unavoidable. But I am game to try some stuff! I am game if you’re game.

It’s taken us a bit longer than I wish and we have miles to go, but we’ve started moving towards upping our sustainability game. I want to share with you some of our work to date and some ideas for the future, and also make a passionate plea for your involvement! This only works with your active support. We all need to change our behavior to make this work. Are you hyped?

Composting

We started composting in October 2019 through Rhodeside Revival, a local facilitator between residential/commercial customers and a composting facility. Other composting facilitators we checked out had strict requirements for their feed (no animal products/bones/shells, for example) and Rhodeside Revival could pick up all our food waste. They haul to Earth Care Farm in Charlestown, RI, which also happens to be our landlord’s sister’s farm where we get beautiful rhubarb in the spring. They produce and bag wicked good compost and I love how traceable this loop is. With this type of thing, traceability is super important to me — if we are spending time, energy and money into developing new systems within our shop, we want to make sure they have full impact.

To date, we have been composting between 2-3 “totes” per week, which works out to ~300-450 lbs/week of organic material diverted from landfills. This is just from the kitchen! Exciting.

What’s next here: We have a new (small) composting bin inside our bus bins in the Front of House. I’m still figuring out how to make it attractive and useful. Composting with the general population at our scale is a bit more complicated than putting a bucket in our kitchen. Send me your ideas!

Reusable Plates, Cups & Mugs

We’re mostly a take-out business and have more in common with fast food restaurants than full-service ones. We have single-use packaging UP THE WAZOO and to be real with you, I hate it. I hate ordering it and I hate having to find somewhere to fit it and I know it’s going to end up as trash. As our business grows, this challenge grows more concerning for me. Switching to reusables is actually a HUGE area of potential impact for us. If we can switch most of our for-here orders to reusable plates, cups & mugs instead of single-use, we can reduce our packaging waste by 10-25%. WE NEED THIS! We need it for sustainability reasons… and we also need it because we’re running out of space for storing single-use packaging. Expect a strong push from us on this one.

We just splurged on more plates, mugs & cups in various sizes, as well as silverware. Now that we have a dishwashing machine, our team can manage the operations of this change more smoothly. I also think it’s a more pleasant experience to take the time to sit and eat off a plate anyway! I am very excited about this change.

What’s next here: We’ll be encouraging you ask for your order “for here” instead of “to go”, especially if you are eating in. Not to put y’all on the spot… but we see many of you get it to go and end up unwrapping your food and sitting down to eat. I think that’s a brilliant opportunity to change our behavior and avoid single-use packaging. We’re happy to give you a box for leftovers if you need it!

This question is probably gonna come up, so let me preempt it: What about compostable packaging?

pic by @maggiekburgess — thanks, Maggie!

While we’re switching to better packaging options where possible (holla at our new compost-friendly sandwich boxes!), we’re not considering compostable plastics at this point. I’ve researched this on and off since 2018 and my Cliff Notes on this topic are:

• Compostable plastics need to be sent to a specialized facility and we have none of those in RI

• Sometimes these composting haulers just end up tossing the “compost” in the landfill anyway

• The plastics contain questionable chemicals that may not be good to put back into soil

• Because y’all take these disposables out of our shop and throw them in the trash/recycling at home/in the office/out in the world, the main benefit is lost

• We’d be paying a considerable premium for this type of packaging (plus different hauling/processing costs) to deal with all of the above

I know other restaurants have made a big push for compostable plastics and I feel the weight of your expectations and our responsibility. But the more I read about this industry top to bottom, the less confidence I feel that we would be doing anything other than overspending on packaging and underdelivering on the promise. If we’re not going to have the impact, I don’t want to convert to “compostables” for the marketing glow. (THE MARKETING GLOW IS REALLLL y’all) I’m on the side of creating less trash in the first place, instead of figuring out what to do with the trash we create. Wanna read more about this topic? Read Clover’s blog here and here— they pioneered the use of all-compostable packaging in fast food years ago, they’ve been VERY open about its successes and struggles, and they are a huge inspiration for what we do here.

Tell me your thoughts: I’m curious to hear your creative ideas for reducing the amount of trash we create and increasing adoption of composting within our 4 walls. Like with every other facet of our business, we’re looking to continuously up our game here.

January is for testing: espresso drinks!

January is a notoriously difficult month to be in the restaurant industry. Have you noticed how so many restaurants close partially or completely during January? After the holiday rush, January is a slump: people are making a serious effort to save money and eat better. Plus the weather sucks and people kinda want to just leave the house and go straight to work. For a lot of restaurant people, It’s a great time to go on vacation.

BABY’S FIRST CAPPUCCINO! And our sweet IKEA mugs

At Rebelle, we use January to plan some of our biggest ideas going into the year and make changes. Last year, our updates were mostly about making it prettier inside, more seating and equipment upgrades. This year, it’s all about taking it to the next level. We have some *~*2020 strategic initiatives*~* that I am super excited to rollout in the next few months, starting with our upcoming espresso test! I love doing tests on the business! I’m very excited. I LIVE for this kind of stuff.

Way back when we built the shop, I made a deliberate decision NOT to serve espresso. I thought that we didn’t need espresso to run a successful breakfast business, and I looked up to peers who built a solid coffee business without espresso. I also had zero barista skills/didn’t have one I could hire and, with our tight budget during our initial buildout, I couldn’t afford a $10,000 espresso machine plus grinder, plus setup with a plumber and an electrician… It adds up.

As time has gone on, our clientele has grown and my view on espresso has evolved. I am a die-hard cappuccino drinker and it is my coffee drink of choice. Selfishly, I’d love to have espresso at Rebelle so that I can have my morning cappuccino here! (If you were wondering, Little Sister will espresso from day one.)

On the macro level, I think customer needs are also changing and we are in a good position to respond to that. People want dope breakfast on-the-go AND a full-fledged coffee shop, all in one. We have noticed the afternoon is a good time for customers to come for a coffee and a bite, maybe to do some work, have a meeting or pass the time. Espresso drinks fit the bill much better than drip coffee.

The coffee shops are going into breakfast, too. Starbucks has built up their food program to ~20% of their sales over the last few years with a strong focus on breakfast. Dunkin’ relaunched their espresso program last summer and saw a 30% growth in espresso drink sales. Just on a relaunch! Astounding what clever marketing does. We don’t aspire to be Dunkin’ or Starbucks, of course, but they research their market well. I’m down to piggyback on their intel any day of the week.

Because installing an espresso machine and staffing baristas is such a costly undertaking, we have decided to start with a small scale test. We have a small space behind the counter and it is busy, so we need to figure out what kind of demand is realistic for us to meet. We also wanna nail the basics, work out the kinks and figure out the workflow while the setup is still fairly flexible and not plumbed/wired into place. Our friend Bryan at Bolt Coffee loaned us a plug & play espresso machine that doesn’t require plumbing or wiring by professionals, and our roaster Brian from Borealis Coffee trained our team to prepare a few common drinks. The idea is that we will run with the plug & play for a few weeks, see how the test performs sales-wise, tweak the workflow and operations, and make a go/no-go decision on the full setup investment. So far, we’ve made a few drinks for our regulars and the reaction is encouraging!

I like to do big changes bit by bit in rapid succession. Our test will be rolling out slowly in a tiered approach, starting with an email invitation to our most frequent regulars. (HEY! Sign up for our emails! Especially if you come often!) Our regulars are our neighbors, they are super friendly and highly invested in our success, and they tend to give us the most usable feedback. Exactly what we need when undergoing such a big change for us! It’ll likely be a matter of 1-2 weeks of testing with regulars before we feel confident offering espresso drinks to all customers. So if you see the machine and salivate at the thought of steaming cappuccinos, hang tight! We’re coming for ya.

I’m so curious to know: Are you a Rebelle regular who goes elsewhere because we don’t serve espresso drinks? Would you visit us more frequently if we served espresso drinks? What is your espresso drink of choice? TELL ME ALL THE THOUGHTS!