ilanit Hi Barak.

Barak Hi Ilanit.

ilanit Thank you for coming.

Barak Thanks for inviting me.

ilanit Today’s episode is about trade secrets and I could not think of a better example for listeners than Rilbite because Rilbite, is a huge success and it’s about food and when we talk about food there’s a lot of trade secrets. So what is Rilbite?.

Barak That’s a good question. And you know the funny thing is when you when you work on a company and you have a product or at least an idea for a product and you think you know what what the what the brand is what the product is but actually it’s it’s a little bit more complicated. Reminds me a bit of what they thought Facebook is, but as long as they went forward on and on and and they saw it’s successful they didn’t actually understand what it is. So I think it’s about what. About a year since we became an ltd company and about three years since I first thought about the product itself. That only now I think I know what Rilbite is. So I’ll start with a basic. The product is minced plants. It is the equivalent to minced beef,  but the beauty of it is that it’s only made of plants directly from plants fresh plants and just simple ingredients.

ilanit And it’s gluten-free, right ?.

Barak It is. It’s gluten-free.

ilanit which is Amazing.

Barak Yeah. It’s only simple ingredients which means just rice, tomatoes. onions lentils soy or pea and simple spices basically that’s it. So it’s a very simple ingredient list what we call clean label in the food tech industry or the food industry.

ilanit Which is the place to be.

Barak Which is. Yeah absolutely. Today you want to be in the clean-label food category.

ilanit OK. So most interesting question how did you think about how did it happen.

Barak I think they you know like mostly like all the best stories it has to do directly with what you are and who were who you are on a daily basis and basically at the time I was sick I was ill. Most of the time I had terrible headaches and I slept bad and well when I did sleep and digestion problems like everything and going to the doctors and blood tests and all those things came back fine. I was great. You know the patients find but he’s dead. And so I thought well the only thing I can I can do is start to eliminate. So I thought about everything that has to do about my life the way that I sleep. So I changed the mattress I you know I checked the few mattresses and the way that the body should be on it. I changed my insoles. Maybe I’m walking wrong the way I breathe. Just about everything and I kept food for last because food is just you know it’s just stuff. There’s so much to do. It’s just too much work and which it eventually became a lot of many years of work.

Barak So I open up an excel sheet and I put in everything that I ate, what time I ate and also when the food left my body and what time that happened etc.

ilanit Wow this is serious stuff.

Barak It was serious serious stuff and eventually came up to meat doesn’t agree with me parsley doesn’t agree with me. And basically, I went to the supermarket and I knew that I should eat a certain amount of protein and certain amount of etc….

Barak So I picked up the things that were on the shelves and I brought back home and I put it on the micro or pan whatever and it was it was terrible and it tasted terrible and that was you know a point in time that it’s it’s a life changer. I went to my wife and I told her. So listen I had goose bumps saying it. I have no idea why I told I don’t know what we’re gonna do but we are changing our entire diet and don’t ask me what or how but you know everything has to change completely.

ilanit Beautiful.

Barak and she said typical to my wife very very calm and smooth. OK but I want a burger.

Barak That was that and obviously my wife asks for something my wife gets. So I open up I opened up the Internet and I started flipping pages in what exactly the body needs. And and that’s the interesting part. I didn’t go for I need to make a burger for my wife that would emulate beef but I wanted something that would you know first answer my needs which is health and then would you know.

Ilanit Be tasty.

Barak Yeah. Be tasty and it’ll satisfy her. So, I start from the ground up designing the product from nutritional values. That’s what I cared about looking on the back of products that I bought from the supermarket. I couldn’t understand anything.

Barak It was it was methyl cellulose, cellulose that, sugars sugars sugars fats Fats Fats. It was just I couldn’t get where the food was.

Ilanit Welcome to my world.

Barak Yeah so. So that’s what I understood that I didn’t want to do. I wanted to do something that was very simple very you know something that someone anyone from the street would just look at at the back and would say Oh I know these foods.

Ilanit  Digestible.

Barak Yeah.

ilanit Understandable wise.

Barak  simple.  unprocessed if can if possible, as little processes as possible keeping all the vitamins or the micronutrients which very little people the industry barely discusses the micronutrients in the ingredients.

Barak And yeah I’m bout three years later and the thousand patties. At least she took a bite and she said this is good. What is it and that was the product. The product was a clean label religiously idealistic of making a healthy product that potentially could change the entire food industry.

Ilanit Unbelievable. I tasted it myself. So I know that.

Barak And you tried to reverse engineering as well.

ilanit Of course my family tasted it. My kids love it. They’re waiting for it to be mass produced because. They’re upset that it’s not in the freezer. And it’s so it’s unbelievably tasty. And fast forward one year later. And you’re looking at second investment round and there is a lot of hype and excitement around the product. And it’s it’s amazingly secret still because no one except you knows about the formula and the process. Which is I think is a huge achievement. Tell us  tell us about that. I mean you’ve been to the investment round. You’ve met with the investors. Obviously they’ve tasted the product. They loved it. You demonstrated how easy it was to prepare it. And did they ask you what’s the secret.

Barak Yeah, of course, sure.

Ilanit I mean how. I mean sure they need it. They sold a product but they actually were investing without the due diligence of knowing what the process was.

Barak That’s right. Yeah. Well the first thing that comes up to mind is when the anyone investors or you know regular people when they look at the ingredient list they say well this is really simple. I mean there’s nothing in here. What. How does it work. So it has to be probably something silly or something you know something obvious but it’s not. It is an entire unique process of preproduction of the ingredients themselves. We’re not going into RNA DNA or anything.

Ilanit I’ll tell you what. I was vegan. I tried making my own patties without eggs without bread. It doesn’t stick.

Barak Yeah that’s why.

Ilanit I tried.

Barak Yeah. You know that’s the beauty of it going into nutritional values you’re looking into designing a product in a completely different way. You’re not trying to imitate from the end and then building it. You know you were thinking well I need eggs and I need this to bind this and that.

Ilanit your are looking bottom up and not….

Barak I wasn’t looking at that I was looking first with the nutritional values and the funny thing is that when I looked at it it just happened. I mean it took me hundreds of trials but it did happen and when investors took a look and tasted the product. They loved it and they said well take us through the process will sign an NDA and obviously I said no that’s not going to happen because unlike with with tech food when you show someone a product that anyone can produce at home and they haven’t invested it’s just an NDA and it’s like a magic. You know it’s like a magical it’s a magician. It’s either you want to be a magician.

ilanit Right.

Barak And then you’re going into it or you just want to know what the trick is just to satisfy that emotion. So I’m up for if you want to be a magician join you know join the school join the group and then we can talk about letting you a few tips but that’s not about it. It’s about what I think what’s most important for investors is. How are you going to protect the IP is it even. Is it protectable and I think it is.

ilanit Absolutely.

Barak Yeah. You know basically at the moment we’re are a trade secret. Trade secret.

Ilanit Yes.

Barak Classical Coca-Cola.

Ilanit Right.

Barak and what we’ve done to satisfy those investor’s needs is basically brainstorming and doing a lot of a lot of thinking and redesigning. But what we did, essentially, I started in my home kitchen so I took all sorts of different appliances pro appliances that I have because I’ve been in the kitchen since the age of 6. So I have a lot of stuff and what we did is create a black box and put a lot of those well redesigned large scale into industry appliances and we put them we put them in the box and then the the entire process is a plug and play. You just feed the box with the ingredients. You press start and two hours later voila you have a product.

ilanit This is metaphorically, right?

Barak No. That’s actually what it is we’re even thinking about painting the box black.

Ilanit OK wait hold on. I’m taking a step back. The investors want to see OK. They know there is a trade secret. They understand the process is unique. They understand the product because they’ve actually tasted it and they loved it and they said OK we’re happy for you to tell us there’s a trade secret. We’re happy for the trade secret to know that the trade secret is kept somewhere. And now we need to feel comfortable that there is a process and it’s there right.

Barak That’s right.

Ilanit In the proccess you’re translating it into a black box or things happen inside this black box.

Barak That’s right.

Ilanit And that’s where everything is mixed up the process the magic happens. You know. And as an investor I don’t care what the magic is. But I know that it’s there and I know that my rights are protected.

Barak That’s right.

Ilanit And I know that Rilbite is able. Looking forward to keep that trade secret.

Barak And even duplicate and make even a larger scale. So. So yeah. So in that respect investors are happy and the process you discover you’ve described is hands on.

Barak Another thing that they wanted you know just to satisfy that curiosity is just you know what. Then don’t tell us exactly the process but what what what. You know whatever you can say say so. So I think you know if you have a basic like some sort of a focused tagline that explains in a nutshell what it is that you’re doing that satisfies that that you know that offers satisfaction to the investors or listeners or whoever that is.

Barak Otherwise if you’re if you’re being too hashable and everything is you know you’re not willing to discuss anything.   Then then you’re not going to get anywhere.  You have to you have to expose something. It doesn’t have to be you know the core.

Ilanit  give them something.

Barak You have to give them something. Absolutely. And if you’re. And then if if if you can’t put up if you can write a patent on it then you can do what I did. So the black box was finally you know the final nail in that coffin in which we’ve we were able to give them what they wanted.

Ilanit Excellent. And we know that it works because there is a second round of investment.

Barak We call preferred seed. We’re looking at round a in about four months. We’ve had our seed with the Strauss’s the kitchen. And then about six months later we just finished our preferred seed round where we raised one point five million dollars from an angel and Strauss’s group the Strauss group. And in about.

Ilanit Really excited.

Barak Yeah. Very exciting. It’s a lot of it shows faith. You know Strauss started with the kitchen and the whole innovation plan program that they have and then they said well a Rilbite is very interesting to us and we’re going to go forward and invest. And in about four months five months we’re looking at around a which would be extremely. Exciting.

Ilanit It’s exciting.

Barak yeah.

Ilanit I can just imagine. You mentioned patents. I can just imagine the nightmare of filing a patent for this.

Barak for food oh Yeah. Tell me about it.

Ilanit It is. It is literally a nightmare filing patents for food tech. I mean unless you take a certain substance and say OK out of 100 percent of my trade secret I can patent this small process which I know is inventive. I know I know I can’t.  I can’t congratulate you enough on the decision not to file a patent because there’s no upside to it.

Barak At the moment at the moment.

ilanit Right.

Barak Because the the black the black box does bring new a completely new design and approach to food preparation. It’s something that just does not exist in the industry today so we probably will eventually.

Ilanit But that’s different.

Barak Yes.  yeah.

Ilanit The actual process.

Barak Yeah.

Ilanit Recipe.

Barak That’s right.

Ilanit I’m sure they will be solid intellectual property down the line. But I think that you did extremely well with the IP so far.

Barak Thank you.

Ilanit I mean the Rilbite is already a trademark filed a trademark in the U.S. and in Europe.

Barak Yeah.

Ilanit I think that China will join the list soon. Because the Chinese are awful we trademark.

Barak Oh yeah.

Ilanit And I think that speaking of managing the trade secret I think the place to be is that when real bite has 20 and then 40 employees they’re all going to be somehow exposed to parts of the process and I think that the secret here is to expose whoever is working on the manufacturing process only to the to the extent that they need to know what they need to know in the black box that they would need to know a minimum.

Barak That’s right.

Ilanit Which is amazing because this is how the trade secrets could be sustained.

Barak Anyone on the floor on the production floor wouldn’t know anything that’s going on other than which ingredients they put in which is you know fine by the way who will find that’s great. Every anyone should see that we’re using only fresh or you know raw ingredients. But in terms of the actual process yeah. They won’t be exposed.

Ilanit Right. Because the secret is not the ingredients. It’s the actual process.

Barak Absolutely.

Ilanit We know that Kentucky Fried Chicken has their breadcrumb makes process. They divided into two separate companies where they mix it separately.

Barak yeah.

Ilanit we know that Coca-Cola has a process where every chain of the.

Barak It’S essentially just a bottling company.

Ilanit It’s a bottling they have the syrup they have the mixing they have….

Barak We are going there. We are definitely going there we’re thinking about getting. Eventually, after we finish our first pilot on the black box we’re going to make it larger and then we’ll be able to just chip black boxes to co-producers co-manufacturers around the world that already have the CapEx that they need in order to produce so they have the freezing. You know the freezing capacity they have the the the burger form machines or you know schnitzel or kababs or hotdogs or whatever. And but they lack the technology of the pre-processing. So that basically we’re definitely thinking about taking Coca Cola’s steps and doing the same.

Ilanit Excellent That’s the way to go.

Barak Yep.

Ilanit Yeah. Another thing that I think that you’ve done really well is encapsulated the message into the product and I’ve the reason it resonates with me because the podcast name is protecting your value. And I’ve been thinking ages about you know what the title is and how the title reflects my mission. So I know how difficult it is to.

Barak crazy. It’s crazy.

Ilanit create that message.

Barak Very very difficult.

Ilanit Tell us about that I mean how was it for Rilbite.

Barak Well like I said in the beginning of the podcast it took about four years of understanding how what is it because it’s a great tasting product. It’s a clean label product. But you know an important point to say is that we’re not vegan or it’s on a vegan company. We’re not looking to replace meat you know it is a tasty product. And eventually people could be horrified by how it’s produced, but when you put it in your mouth what can you do. People love eating meat. People love eating cheese milk et cetera so we’re not we’re not looking to replace we’re here to offer a wonderful alternative made out of plants.

Ilanit Which is tasty.

Barak Which is tasty and healthy to you. But we couldn’t put it in a line. I mean what. You know it’s six ingredients but people don’t understand is that not everybody knows that. A short short label is a better product for them. I mean do they care.  They don’t know.

Ilanit we know that a lot of vegans just eat a lot of bread.

Barak That’s right.

Ilanit potatoes.

Barak Yeah yeah yeah. I mean you take a look at the ingredient list of some of you know most. Popular brands out there today it’s 30 ingredients 40 ingredients of processed triggers fats you know etc… and how do you explain to the mass market that our product is a better product and it took us time and eventually actually because of a lot of the conventions and fairs that we attend. I guess that’s part of the catalyst that made us understand what Rilbite is and nd a lot to do also with the competition the UVP your unique value proposition comes from what it is that you do best what it is that your competition does and what the customer needs.

Barak So, everybody, has the burger crave and it’s a guilty pleasure getting eating burgers with all that fat and you know you crunch the bun with everything in it and it slides in drips and all those things that’s that’s guilty pleasure you can’t eat a burger every day you shouldn’t eat a burger every day especially because what a burger is made out of if it’s meat then it has way too much fat and cholesterol if it’s plant-based then again.

Ilanit It may not be tasty.

Barak It may not be tasty but if even if it is its candy food it’s candy you can’t eat it every day it’s two hundred and forty calories with an abundant 30 percent of fat and sugars and it’s just it’s not healthy for you it might be tasty it’s not healthy. So you have a lot of guilty pleasure and that’s what that’s the beauty of it Rilbite is the food you crave guilt-free you can eat real bite every day you can eat will buy twice or three times a day. It’s only 120 calories and it is so damn tasty.

Ilanit Amazing. I think the competition is impossible Burgur impossible foods?.

Barak Impossible Foods beyond a lot of major companies Nestlé just came up with with their own brand that McDonald’s is now serving in some selected countries but all of them are using basically the same approach. We want to imitate beef as much as we can and we don’t really care what it is that we put it in the product.

Ilanit Which is why they have like 50 ingredients inside their burger.

Barak Yeah between 30 to 40. You know they have a beauty something so something called natural spices or something like that which is nothing but natural. All right. They have all those methylcelluloses and processed the sugars.

Ilanit You don’t even know how to pronounce it.

Barak Yeah exactly and one other thing that we’ve excelled in being sustainable is first of all when you use fresh ingredients then you don’t need to supply. You don’t need that the whole supply chain of farm to another processing plants to another distributor etc. We’re just taking the raw material as-is fresh or frozen because of kosher issues. But because we’re using the raw materials we don’t add any water into our process there is no water.

Ilanit is that a big deal not to have water excuse my….

Barak you know what. Absolutely because 70 percent of the world’s population suffers at least one month of water scarcity per year. This is not some sort of a lost village in the Amazon. We’re talking about. But you know here in Israel Tel Aviv Jerusalem in California the United States in Japan in China anywhere in the world Africa. Not to mention South Africa with huge issues of water. Water is a huge huge problem that we can’t seem to figure out because there are just so many you know so many needs. We need water everywhere. Yes. So when you use fresh materials like onions like tomatoes there’s just so much water in it. Why use dehydrated onions. That’s because it’s it’s the old industry approach. So we’re taking the entire the entire product. We are a zero-waste plant. We’re using everything in the process. And yeah.

Ilanit Anyone listening to this episode you should go to Rilbite.com. You see the pictures and the videos and and I promise you one thing you’re going to want to do is taste this burger because it doesn’t look like anything healthy.

Barak Yeah but that’s important. Yeah it doesn’t look like anything healthy but it is it’s important to say that we’re not just making a burger right. Our minced product our minced plants is one to one switch ratio for minced meat beef. So you can make your own meatballs or put it you know just

Ilanit Bite sizes to the listeners..  when they are looking at it, you can actually make your own burger or minced or…

Barak Bolognese or stuffed or steamed or grill or anything that you can think of. You have a recipe of a great old grandmother from 100 years ago. I don’t know.

ilanit Right. Which is what I did. By the way. Yeah. I just took a very ancient Iraqi recipe I used Rilbite and it was amazing.

Barak Yeah the switches is simple.

Ilanit Excellent. Barak thanks for coming.

Barak Thank you.

Ilanit It’s been a pleasure to have you here. I think that. The amazing thing about our conversation is that could be translated to other types of innovation we see we see companies struggling to keep their intellectual property sometimes filing patents where they shouldn’t. Sometimes not being aware that they have so many trade secrets in-house. I mean in Rilbite I think it’s very apparent what the trade secret is. I mean everybody understands that Barak alone knows what the process is. You know sometimes managers are not sure what the trade secrets they have are in in-house.

Barak Yeah. And it’s important to note that there is a document of the whole process in a safe with our IP lawyers.

Ilanit Absolutely you wanna come work for Applefeld and company?

Barak I’m too busy.

ilanit well you’re accepted. You got the job. Thanks, Barak. OK see you soon.

Barak Thanks. Bye-bye.