CRAIN'S NEW YORK BUSINESS:New entrant into the fast-growing food-delivery business actually hires its own couriers

OnDelivery.com, an offshoot of a Flushing, Queens, service, will target many restaurants not accommodated by existing services.

By Adrianne Pasquarelli 

Another food-delivery service is cycling into Manhattan. OnDelivery.com, an offshoot of a similar service founded two years ago in Flushing, Queens, launched Thursday in lower Manhattan.

Like Seamless, OnDelivery partners with restaurants to deliver meals, but unlike the larger service, it employs its own couriers. Other sites, such as Postmates and Caviar FastBite, use contractors to transport goods.

"Every driver who works for us is an actual employee of our company, so we have better control and more consistency—that's our advantage over these other websites," explained James Chen, co-founder of OnDelivery.

Already, the company, which covers everything below 42nd Street, has 30 restaurants lined up, including many Chinatown-based establishments that have never before offered delivery.

It's starting with 10 couriers, a number Mr. Chen expects to grow to 50 by the end of the company's first year, based on his experience with 20-month-old FlushingFood.com.

The minimum wage for tipped workers will go up to $7.50 at the end of the year from $5 an hour. But Mr. Chen said his delivery workers will earn the state minimum wage, $8.75, plus tips.

The older company generated $4 million in business from online orders in 2014; Mr. Chen estimates that OnDelivery will bring in $10 million annually because of its larger geography. Customers must pay a processing fee of less than $5, depending on distance, and restaurants are charged $100 for registration as well as a 20% per order fee.

Yet with the recent launch of food startups such as Maple and meal-kit ventures like Plated, and existing services that have already contracted with restaurants, the delivery market is quite crowded.

Some local politicians are already voicing their support for OnDelivery. A spokesman for City Council member Margaret Chin noted that delivery issues have consistently plagued lower Manhattan, as riders use illegal electric bikes, cut corners and ignore traffic warnings in their rush to deliver food while it's still hot. But because OnDelivery employees aren't returning to the same restaurant, but rather taking orders from those sites closest to their current locations, there will be less back and forth and, in theory, less road congestion.

"We are working to improve the working conditions of delivery people, and a company like this, that offers this kind of service, is doing precisely that," said Ms. Chin's spokesman. "They've made a commitment to treating their workers fairly in terms of delivery people—and delivery people working for restaurants don't always have that."

http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20150730/TECHNOLOGY/150739990/this-new-entrant-into-the-fast-growing-food-delivery-business-actually-hires-its-own-couriers

amNewYork: OnDelivery.com now brings Chinatown food uptown

By MELISSA KRAVITZ August 3, 2015

There's a Chinese food revolution happening below 42nd Street.

Venturing to Canal Street is no longer necessary thanks to the launch of OnDelivery.com.

The brand-new food delivery site launched on July 30 and has so far signed 18 Chinese and Asian fusion restaurants in Chinatown and the East Village. Currently,  food delivery is available between lower Manhattan and 42nd Street.

According to the website, OnDelivery aims to provide "affordable yet authentic international dishes."

Forget your mediocre midtown lunch, OnDelivery will bring you food from Chinatown favorites including Golden Mandarin Court (sizzling jumbo shrimp! thousand years egg with spinach!), Taiwan Bear House (fried chicken! bubble tea!), Ajisen Ramen (ramen!) and full menus from many more hotspots.

The site also deliver from the oldest Haagen Dazs in Manhattan -- open since 1977. 

Most delivery minimums are listed at $20 and an estimated hour delivery time to midtown.

Here's to hoping even more Chinatown restaurants join in!

VOICE OF NY: Chinatown Restaurants Turn to Website to Draw More Customers

AUGUST 3, 2015BY RONG XIAOQING

SOURCE: SING TAO DAILY

| TRANSLATED BY RONG XIAOQING

 FROM CHINESE

OnDelivery.com, an online delivery website founded by Chinese Americans James Chen and Robert Huang, was launched in Chinatown on July 30. Unlike many other online delivery websites on the market, OnDelivery.com hires its own deliverymen, a service proved to be appealing to restaurants in Chinatown which traditionally don’t do delivery to save labor costs. So far, 30 restaurants have registered for the service. The founders expect its users to double or triple in the first year, and to bring $10 million of extra business to its clientele.

Chen and Huang base their optimism on a previous success. It only took a year for the number of customers of flushingfood.com, a similar delivery website the two founded in the neighborhood in September 2013, to jump from the original 19 to 103. And in its first year, flushingfood.com brought $4 million in business to its clients.

Chen said that the idea of forming flushingfood.com came from his and his partner’s observation that the younger generation like to order delivery but many Chinese restaurants are not ready to provide the service. “The restaurant industry in Chinatown is more established than in Flushing. If we can get $4 million for our clients in Flushing within the first year, there is no problem bringing $10 million in business to our Chinatown clients,” Chen said.

OnDelivery.com can take orders for restaurants and the customers pay for the food online. Restaurants don’t have to operate their own website or worry about technical problems with the Internet. The deliverymen working for the website are responsible for taking take the food from the restaurants and delivering it to the customers. The restaurants only need to pay a service fee of 20 percent of the price of the food. For restaurants that don’t do delivery otherwise, this means extra business.

Mr. He, the owner of Shanghai Cuisine on Bayard Street, said in its 18-year history, the restaurant has never provided delivery service because the safety and insurance issues of hiring deliverymen are discouraging. If OnDelivery.com can do it for him, he is happy to try. “This is a win-win solution,” he said.

Mrs. Zhu, owner of Old Sichuan Cuisine on Bayard Street, said many restaurants in Chinatown don’t do delivery. But in recent years, fewer tourists come to Chinatown and rents here have grown rapidly at the same time. The prices of ingredients have been rising as well. For example, a pound of beef sold for only $1.99 in 2010, and now it is $7. All of these put restaurant owners under enormous pressure. To take delivery orders via the website is at least another way to get more business.

Mrs. Zhu said her restaurant sometimes takes delivery orders. But the restaurant has no deliverymen. The job is shared by employees who have other duties, and becomes a burden for them. Now that the website can do delivery for her, Mrs. Zhu said the 20 percent service charge is worth it.

Taiwan Bear House, a Taiwanese food restaurant that just opened on Pell Street, had been trying the services of OnDelivery.com, before it formally launched, for two weeks. The restaurant itself doesn’t offer delivery, but business coming from the website has made up 20 to 30 percent of its total revenue. “This is extra business. So I don’t mind the two or three dollars in service charges,” said Kris Kuo, the founder of the restaurant.

The office of OnDelivery.com is on Pell Street, where their 10 full-time deliverymen are based. The deliverymen, who mainly use bicycles to deliver the food, are paid minimum wage plus tips. The company also buys insurance for them.

The website takes orders from 11 am to 11 pm. For addresses within two miles of Chinatown, food arrives within an hour after the order is placed. Chen said the company plans to hire 50 employees in the first year. And if things are going well, the company may expand to Upper Manhattan and Brooklyn.

State Sen. Daniel Squadron, Council member Margaret Chin, Wellington Chen, the executive director of Chinatown Partnership, Justin Yu, president of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, and Kenny Chan, chairman of the Chinese American Restaurant Service Association, attended the launch ceremony. They all hope the website can become a new engine of the restaurant industry in Chinatown.

http://www.voicesofny.org/2015/08/chinatown-restaurants-turn-to-website-to-draw-more-customers/

DNAinfo: New Website Delivers Food from Chinatown to Lower Manhattan and Midtown

CHINATOWN — Dishes from more than a dozen Chinatown restaurants can now be delivered to your home or office within an hour.

OnDelivery.com, a new “food messenger” service that launched earlier this month, can deliver Tawainese bento boxes, bao, ramen bowls and other delicious treats anywhere in Lower Manhattan up to 42nd Street from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day, it announced at a Thursday afternoon press conference.

The site lets customers view menus and order food online, which is then delivered by uniformed food messengers hired by the company, who travel by bicycle or subway, said co-founder James Chen, who started a similar site in Queens calledflushingfood.com a year ago.

“We provide the delivery service for every order that’s generated on our website, so this way we can deliver much further and much faster,” he said at the press conference, which took place at Shanghai Cuisine at Bayard and Mulberry streets.

Although convenient for customers, the service has advantages for local businesses as well, Chen said. OnDelivery allows restaurants to expand their customer base without the hassle of hiring extra workers, purchasing equipment and paying higher insurance rates to cover deliverymen, he said.

The fledging service has already won the support from local elected officials and business leaders, who see the service as a way to promote local businesses, which have been negatively impacted through the closure of Park Row and the economic downtown in the past few years.

“These are locally owned small businesses, often immigrant-owned, and we should be doing more to support them. This is another way for them to thrive and succeed,” said State Sen. Daniel Squadron, who was at the press conference with City CouncilwomanMargaret Chin, Chinatown Partnership Executive Director Wellington Chen, Chinese Chamber of Commerce of New York President Justin Yu and a representative from the Manhattan Borough President’s office.

OnDelivery currently works with 15 restaurants, which are mostly in Chinatown, although a few East Village eateries have also started using the service, according to the company. About 10 more are in the process of signing a contract with the company, a spokesman said.

Chen hopes to generate $10 million in online business for participating restaurants this year and to hire 50 messengers, who will be paid $8.75 an hour plus tips and overtime, he said.

DNAinfo(07/31/2015)

http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20150731/chinatown/new-website-delivers-food-from-chinatown-lower-manhattan-midtown

Time Out New York: New delivery service brings Chinatown to your doorstep

Your sad desk lunch just got a big upgrade.

A recently launched website called OnDelivery.com is now conveniently delivering Chinatown's international fare—including soup dumplings, pork-belly bento boxes and bubble tea—anywhere in downtown Manhattan. Founder James Chen, who created the similar FlushingFoods.com in Queens, realized that technological and linguistic barriers were preventing many small businesses from taking advantage of delivery opportunities. Rather than drawing on manpower from the often short-staffed restaurants, the company employs its own uniformed messengers who pick up and deliver food by bike or subway. 

The service currently works with 15 restaurants including Shanghai Cuisine, Ajisen Ramen, and Taiwan Bear House—with plans to expand to grocery stores as well. Deliveries are available to all addresses south of 42nd Street in Manhattan.

Time Out New York (08/03/2015)

http://www.timeout.com/newyork/blog/new-delivery-service-brings-chinatown-to-your-doorstep-080315