Food delivery platform
FantuanNative name | 饭团外卖 |
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| Industry | Online food ordering |
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| Founded | 2014 |
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| Founders | Randy Wu
Yaofei Feng |
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Area served | Canada, United States, Australia, United Kingdom |
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Key people | Randy Wu (CEO) |
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| Website | fantuan.ca |
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Fantuan Delivery (Chinese: 饭团外卖; pinyin: Fàntuán Wàimài) is a Canadian food delivery platform focused on Asian cuisine based in Burnaby, British Columbia.[1] The Fantuan mobile app allows users to order food, receive food deliveries, and have errands be done; delivery drivers, working as independent contractors, receive payment and tips through the app.[2]
Name and branding
The Chinese word Fantuan refers to a rice ball, which also serves as the logo of the company.[2]
History
Randy Wu, then an economics student at Simon Fraser University, founded Fantuan in 2014 with co-founder Yaofei Feng, who had attended Oregon State University for a masters degree in computer science and left his position as a software engineer Amazon to join the company.[3][2] The founders, who met through the online game DOTA, had come to North America from China as international students and noted that familiar food options were lacking near their university campuses.[3][2]
Wu modelled the company's services after Chinese food delivery app Meituan.[3] In the early stages of the company, Wu and Feng personally ordered food from restaurants and delivered it to customers.[3][2]
The company expanded its operations to Toronto in 2016.[1] It entered the United States market in 2019,[1] starting out in Seattle before expanding into New York and California, states with high concentrations of Chinese Americans.[4]
An English version of the Fantuan app, which was initially Chinese-only, was launched in 2020.[2]
Fantuan received US$40 million in Series C funding in December 2023.[3] Investors included Celtic House Asia, GrubMarket, Vision Plus, and JSD Capital, as well as firms and businesspeople involved in China's food delivery and retail technologies market.[3]
In January 2024, the company announced that it had acquired the food delivery business of Chowbus.[1]
Services
A key focus of Fantuan's services is providing Chinese food delivery services to Chinese people in North America, with new immigrants and foreign students being the initial target customers for the app.[5] The app seeks to resolve some of the problems that Chinese users and restauranteurs may face with mainstream delivery platforms, including unfamiliar user interfaces, a lack of support for WeChat Pay and Alipay, and ratings for Chinese restaurants that might not accurately reflect their quality,[5] and draws inspiration from "super-apps" that are common in China.[2]
Some Chinese restaurants on Fantuan's app are Fantuan exclusives. The company told Chinese startup-focused publication 36Kr in 2019 that many Chinese restaurants unable to find large followings on mainstream delivery apps have chosen to work with Fantuan, which also helps promote collaborating restaurants online and offline using its own marketing teams.[5]
References
