Fantuanan Asian food distribution company based in Vancouver, Canada, has announced its acquisition Chowbus‘ business delivery line. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Chicago-based Chowbus also launched as a delivery service in 2016, focused on giving mom-and-pop Asian restaurants a way to expand their customer base. Co-founders Suyu Zhang and Linxin Wen grew the company to more than 20 cities by 2020 and raised $40 million in venture capital funding, including a $33 million round in 2020.
Then, in 2022, Chowbus turned to providing restaurant management software and point-of-sale services, Yaofei Feng, co-founder of Fantuan, told TechCrunch. A year later, he had over 1,000 restaurant customers.
“We’re in a similar industry, but each has a specific demographic to cover,” Feng said. “Now we’re covering more in Canada and they’re more in the middle and east side of the United States. We wanted to get better penetration and get more customers, so we sat down and talked.”
Fantuan and Chowbus come together. (Image credit: Fantuan)
With the acquisition comes a partnership between the two companies that will combine each of their strengths with local Asian restaurants: Fantuan’s fast food delivery process with Chowbus’ restaurant management software.
“With the rapid growth of the SaaS restaurant business line, we want to focus on and develop better products and services for merchants,” Linxin Wen, founder and CEO of Chowbus, said in a statement. “We are confident that our partnership with Fantuan will provide enhanced and expanded services for merchants across food delivery systems, restaurant SaaS and beyond.”
Meanwhile, Fantuan was founded in 2014 by Randy Wu and operates in more than 60 cities across Canada, the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom. In addition to restaurant delivery, the company is also active in the fresh grocery delivery and food service sectors. In December 2023, Fantuan raised $40 million in Series C capital.
About 20 employees from Chowbus will join Fantuan, which will also manage Chowbus’ fleet of independently contracted delivery drivers, Feng said.
After consolidating Chowbus’ delivery operations, Fantuan plans to strengthen its Asian-focused food delivery services in US cities. In Canada, the company already has about 80 percent of the market share, compared to just 10 percent of the U.S. market, Feng said. The two companies also want to help restaurants gain additional business and convenience through order automation and more revenue.
The food delivery industry is going through an interesting time. JOKR makes it work, while Getir pulled out of some markets over the summer. More recently, it saw Uber announce it would shut down Drizly after acquiring the alcohol e-commerce business three years ago, and Jumia said it was ending its food delivery service due to “deeply aggressive rivals,” according to CEO Francis Dufay. Meanwhile, antitrust regulators in the European Union had similar suspicions of cartels and raided two online food delivery companies in November. And Indian food delivery company Swiggy went on a buying spree.
