A Burnaby Asian food stuff app that has been a sensation – escalating across Canada and into main U.S. markets like New York and Los Angeles – has added an English edition that includes a bazillion new selections.
Fantuan has introduced an formal English application in Ontario and B.C., including Fantuan’s HQ location of Burnaby. Fantuan has also welcomed a new diverse team of supply staff members, supporting develop bridges involving cultures.
Fantuan claims it grew by almost 400% previous 12 months, and is looking at huge demand across Canada and the United States.
“Throughout the pandemic, Fantuan has offered lower commissions, higher shell out, and additional chances to people influenced by the pandemic (particularly at-possibility minority groups whose work opportunities were negatively impacted),” the corporation said in a assertion.
Fantuan is now also including far more non-Asian possibilities to the app, such as Mexican meals, pizza, burgers and sandwiches, fried rooster, and barbecue favourites.
The newest Fantuan function allows users to have the app’s motorists operate errands for them, like providing bouquets.
“Say you have a offer that requires to be picked up in Vancouver, but you never have time, out drivers will decide on it up for you,” the corporation mentioned.
The major concentrate, of class, is on offering foods – mostly Chinese foodstuff. Fantuan orders are around 60-for every-cent Chinese foods and 40 for every cent break up concerning foodstuff from other Asian nations, these types of as Vietnam, Japan and Thailand, as effectively as rapid-foods stores like Subway.
A particular person orders food from the hundreds of cafe associates and a driver is notified by way of the application with a map to the eatery to decide up the meals, as perfectly as GPS instructions to the customer’s household. Fantuan fees restaurants a reduced percentage than other delivery apps.
Fantuan is the brainchild of Randy Wu, who came up with the concept although a scholar Simon Fraser University.
Wu observed that daily life for numerous overseas college students was tricky, primarily when it arrived to feeding on their own. Just one explanation was that a lot of college students didn’t know their way all around the spots exterior of their school’s campus. An additional was that few learners have a automobile.
“If you do not have a motor vehicle, you really do not have legs,” Wu claims.
So he went about establishing a company in which Asian students could get the food they really like and have it shipped to their doorway.
It is referred to as Fantuan (Mandarin for rice ball) and it grew so speedy that Wu took that gigantic chance by quitting college in 2014. The threats ongoing when, for an entire calendar year, he did not explain to his mom and dad he was no lengthier a scholar.
In hindsight, founding the Fantuan app – together with Feng Yaofei – wasn’t seriously a possibility at all mainly because the corporation has exploded in the previous couple of several years.
There is also an English model of the application in the works right before the stop of the year. Fantuan has also expanded its app from food items deliveries to other options, including self-pickup (with special discounts), on the web opinions of the restaurants it provides for, and on line searching in which buyers can order grocery things and have them sent.
Abide by Chris Campbell on Twitter @shinebox44.