Cover Helga Angelina Tjahjadi and her husband Max Mandias started one of Jakarta's first plant-based fast food chain, Burgreens, in 2013 before launching their food-tech startup, Green Rebel, in 2020 (Photo: Green Rebel)
Helga Angelina Tjahjadi and her husband Max Mandias started one of Jakarta's first plant-based fast food chain, Burgreens, in 2013 before launching their food-tech startup, Green Rebel, in 2020 (Photo: Green Rebel)
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The Indonesian entrepreneur shares the nerve-racking moment she had to pivot her restaurant business into frozen food and her experience with going viral on social media for the wrong reasons, on the latest episode of Gen.T’s Crazy Smart Asia podcast
As a child, Helga Angelina Tjahjadi was dealing with several chronic medical conditions, from asthma to eczema. At 15 years old, after reading books on nutrition and gut health, she decided to try switching to a plant-based diet. Within two years, her health issues dramatically reduced, with most of them completely gone.
“That’s when I became passionate about the industry I currently am in,” says the now-co-founder of two plant-based companies, restaurant chain Burgreens and food-tech startup Green Rebel.
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Now a vegan, she and her husband Max started Burgreens first in 2013 to offer delicious meals to an underserved audience seeking plant-based options. It was well-received, given Indonesians weren’t unfamiliar with these types of food. Its menu would later incorporate more familiar Indonesian flavours, in response to feedback from some of its most loyal customers.
This set the tone for the pair’s spin-off business, Green Rebel, which was born out of need at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Lockdowns during that time meant that more than half of Burgreens’ outlets in shopping malls could not operate—but the company still had 200 employees on its payroll. Revenues dropped by 80 percent and as Tjahjadi recalls, “We had a cash reserve that could last us only a week.”
Thinking fast, the couple converted their best-selling products into frozen foods and sold them online. The positive reception they received was beyond their expectation—and even caught the attention of Starbucks, which had plans to launch a plant-based menu. Their collaboration with Starbucks marked the start of Green Rebel, which has since partnered more than 1,000 food service outlets and major companies such as Ikea, Domino’s and AirAsia.
Speaking to Gen.T’s Chong Seow Wei for our Crazy Smart Asia podcast, Tjahjadi shares more about the founding story of Burgreens and Green Rebel, her approach to plant-based food and why she once went viral on social media for the wrong reasons.
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Here are a few excerpts from the conversation. Click the audio player below to listen to the full episode or subscribe via Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
On making conscious actions
“Everything we do has an impact, so we need to choose what kind of impact we want to make.”
On her approach to plant-based food
“The way we position our brand is we make healthy convenience meals that happen to be plant-based. We create great products that people enjoy, whether or not they intentionally want to eat plant-based [food].”
Read more: Singapore plant-based meat startup Karana expands to New York
On that unwanted viral moment
“I [once] went viral on Twitter in Indonesia for five days. I had spoken on a podcast about [my journey], and [part of] my [episode] was cut and reposted by another media platform that was agreeing with my point of view. But they [used] their own title, which was along the line of ‘Is your burger warming the climate?’ That was reposted by someone [else] with a pretty big following on Twitter and they thought it was me saying that. [That’s when it] went viral and people made comments [about me] on social media, but [most of them] never actually listened to the full [episode].
On not pretending to be a chef
“I cannot cook, even though I run a restaurant and food company. So, you know, Green Rebel is actually a solution for people like me because we just need to heat [the meal] up.”
On the entrepreneurial conviction
“As an entrepreneur, sometimes you just have this conviction about something even though you don’t have all the data available. I think that’s what makes entrepreneurs entrepreneurs, you know? Even though we don’t know all parts of things, we have this conviction that we’re going to get there.”
Quotes are edited for clarity and brevity.
Listen to the episode and subscribe using your preferred podcast platform on our Crazy Smart Asia podcast page.
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Chong Seow Wei is a regional senior editor covering business, innovation, impact and people. Based in Singapore, she oversees content for Gen.T, Tatler’s platform for promising entrepreneurs and new-generation leaders, and its Power & Purpose vertical.
