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There are a lot of food delivery apps out there. So how can a new food app differentiate itself? RushOrder has an advantage many other food apps don’t: Koreatown.
“The mobile payment and restaurant space is pretty saturated,” said Henry Choi, sales and marketing lead at RushOrder. “What we are really trying to promote with this initiative is doing something that is really more locally focused.”
“Our focus is on this niche market that really isn’t on the map,” said COO Eric Kim. The mom and pop shops that are common in Koreatown and only known to the most die-hard foodies and locals, “they’re really like hidden treasures… our focus is bringing that segment of the market onto our platform and making it available for a broader demographic.”
Since being founded in March 2013, RushOrder has raised $1 million in capital and has grown to 10 Los Angeles-based employees. In the food delivery world, it is very much the neophyte.
Being young, however, might be to RushOrder’s advantage. In their efforts to conquer mass market food delivery, apps like GrubHub and Eat24 often have skipped over niche markets like Koreatown. By opening up a whole new food experience to users, the RushOrder team believes they will be able to lock down a reputation for food discovery and convenience.
“Some Koreatown restaurants, it is hard to place an order over the phone because there is no one available who speaks English. Restaurants are owned and run by older generations,” said Kim.
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To further open Koreatown restaurants to a larger market, RushOrder searches out the best of them, adds them to their
app and even translates their menus into English. Now including restaurants outside of Korea Town, nearly 300 restaurants use the RushOrder app.
“We specifically find the restaurants we want on the app,” said Kim. “It's not us just loading up a bunch of K-Town restaurants. It’s kind of like a virtual tour guide for K-Town restaurants. It’s really guiding the users to the most popular places around.”
If Koreatown is RushOrder’s focus now, the company wants its long-term focus to be fast ordering and delivery for time-pinched professionals.
The app is well on its way toward that goal and has restaurants across Los Angeles using the app.
"These Koreatown merchants make up only a small subset of our LA network," said Kim.
Koreatown and throughout Los Angeles the app delivers food within an hour or less and most food ordered on RushOrder is delivered to a location in a two-three mile radius of the restaurant that makes it. Some users only live a few blocks away.
“It is really a matter of convenience for these guys that live eight blocks away, but they still use an app to order food,” said Kim.
Signs like that have RushOrder believing there is still room for another food delivery app.
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