An online grocery store crafted by 28-year-old Andrea Xu delivers authentic Asian food right to the user’s doorstep, Good Morning America reports.
According to TODAY, Xu grew up in Spain with Chinese immigrant parents who owned and operated a Chinese restaurant. Xu’s parents cooked Chinese cuisine both in the restaurant and at home. However, Madrid markets’ limited products made the authenticity of the cuisine questionable.
“My parents served Chinese food, but they had to conform to what is it considered Chinese food in Spain, they had to have certain things on the menu,” Xu told TODAY. “For Umamicart, I wanted to create something that’s not determined by something else. Getting rid of that undo definition is part of this.”
Xu herself shops at mom-and-pop markets as well as stores in Chinatown. Despite frequenting these places, she still finds it difficult to find all the ingredients needed for a recipe. Therefore, Xu created Umamicart which provides users with accessible Asian food remotely.
Umamicart allows customers to buy items regardless of amount. Some staples sold include Yakult, Korean-style beef short rib or seasonal dragonfruit.
According to Good Morning America, Xu works with different local suppliers that bring their products to the website.
“We started working on this in the midst of the pandemic, so it was pretty hard to meet them in person, and a lot of them don’t have online channels,” Xu said. “It was a labor of love building trust and explaining the value proposition to them and that we’re not a site where we’re going to charge them a super high fee — rather work with them to highlight their products and build a good partnership.”
The online grocer is currently delivering locally to New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Washington, D.C. and Virginia.
“Our catalog will continue to grow and evolve, just as Asian American food culture does,” Xu told Gear Patrol. “We plan to add hundreds more products in the near future, with the goal of allowing our customers to find every grocery item they need for their own Asian cuisine journeys. We still have so much more that we are planning and looking forward to adding, and we welcome product and ingredient requests.”
Umamicart is constantly growing and can be found at umamicart.com. Users may provide their email address to get updates for when services become available.
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