Online food ordering and delivery service is a highly competitive industry in Los Angeles. Some startups, however, smartly take advantage of their upper hand and successfully get into the market left untouched by many bigger players like GrubHub and Eat24.

Kirin Kang emigrated from China to U.S. six years ago. Until 2013, He worked as a sales man in a trading company. In his one-hour lunch break, Kang usually spent 40 minutes on ordering and waiting for his lunch, and then the rest 20 minutes on quickly swallowing the food. Kang later found his friends, colleagues, and other working class people have the same issue.

“How I wished to have a 10-minute break after my lunch,” Kang said, “ So I though if I can order food online and someone can delivery it for me, then my life would be much easier.”

In 2014, he decided to be person who provides the convenience. Since arrival, Kang has been living in the San Gabriel Valley, where the telephone area code is 626, so he named his company as ToGo626.

“I live in the 626 area and it’s also my major market now” said Kang, “I want to do something good: bringing Chinese food beyond this area.”

ToGo626 has partnered with over 90 businesses within 2 months. Most of them are Chinese restaurants.

“Speaking Mandarin helps me a lot in this process,” Kang said. “I communicate with the businesses owners in Mandarin and translate their menus from Chinese to English.”

As most of his customers are Chinese people, Kang had both Chinese and English version of ToGo626.com.

 

 

 

 

In April 2014, the biggest online food ordering and delivery site, GrubHub, initiated public offering at the price of $26 per share. It raised $200 millions in total. As the CNN Money reporting says, the company estimated to worth $2.7 billion at the current price. On the website, there are 3564 restaurants in Los Angeles partner with GrubHub.

Valley Boulevard in San Gabriel Valley harbors many popular Chinese restaurants like Boiling Point, Shanghai No.1 Seafood and Szechuan Impression. But these restaurants on can barely be found on GrubHub.

Eat24, as another big player in this industry, provides a few more Chinese food options, but still, many popular Chinese restaurants are off its list.

“Language barrier might be the reason why they haven’t opened the Chinese restaurant market for so long,” Kang analyzed.

Another startup called RushOrder shares the same notion. Like ToGo626, RushOrder focus on the Koreatown area.

“A lot of our team members, including myself, were raised in Koreatown. I still live there,” said Henry Choi, leading the sales and marketing department of RushOrder. “So we have this advantage than the bigger players in the industry — we know the area, the language, and the popular restaurants.”

With the help of the mother tongue, Korean, Choi and his team members were able to bring in 55 Korean restaurants within 3 months.

“Overall we are planning to go live with about 300 restaurants in the next a couple of months,” Choi said. “One of our goal is to provide Korean cuisine to people that may not have necessarily known about it. So if they go to the restaurant and see the menu, they might be intimidated and they don’t even understand what it is. So what we can do is we can fully translated and explain to them.”

Americans are estimated to spend $70 billion on food takeout and delivery in 2014, according to BI Intelligence. $9 billion out of that amount will be spent on online orders. Grub and Seamless merged in August 2013, and they will altogether take up 19% of the share. The rest 81% is divided by different smaller service providers.

 

Uber, the ride sharing company, is also trying to get a slice of the cake. Since August, 2014, it has been testing a food delivery service called UberFRESH. Currently, the service cover two areas: Westside and Beverly Hills/West Hollywood. The ordering time for lunch is between 11:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.; for dinner is 5:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

UberFRESH claims the meals can be delivered within 10 minutes, compared to 45minuts to 1 hour of other similar services. And the delivery fee starts from $3 no matter how many meals the customer order.

Just like requesting the Uber ride, customers can order food delivery service online.

EatStreet is also an online food ordering and delivery service provider. Marcus Higgins, VP of sales, told QSRweb.com “The reason consumers prefer online versus traditional (phone or in-person) orders is because it offers instant gratification. It’s all about being able to have the convenience to go online, look at a menu, look at the items you want and not have to wait for someone,” he continued “There are also other benefits, such as order accuracy and price checking, the elimination of any language barriers, and the convenience of already having your payment information on file, instead of having to enter it every time.”

 

Higgin’s analysis echoes with the survey done by Statista.

The convenience brings ToGo626 around 100 orders during weekdays. “There may be more on weekends,” Kang said.

 

Thanks to the spread of Internet and smartphone, the age of customers using online ordering and delivery service is getting younger and younger. Most of the customers’ ages are between 18 to 45 for both ToGo626 and RushOrder.

“There are students, working class people, and parents that order food for their kids at home,” Kang said.

The online food ordering and delivery service not only benefits customers, but also helps bring more orders to businesses, and the service providers, in return, generates revenue from that.

“The way our business works is that the restaurant pays us depending on how many orders we bring to them,” said Choi from RushORder. For every months, “0-25 orders, is free. 26-100 orders, is 50 dollars. Anything over 100 orders is 100 dollars”

“We actually use a delivery company. The cost that the delivery company charging us, is what the customers paying for,” Choi continued. Therefore, the major revenue of RushOrder comes from businesses rather than customers.

Unlike RushOrder, ToGo626 has a 15-driver delivery team and some volunteer drivers. “But our delivery fee is only about $0.99 per mile,” said Kang, “So delivery is actually a supplementary service.”

Kang treats ToGo626 more as a platform to promote and advertise restaurants. Most of the restaurants provide sponsorship to keep the partnership with ToGo626.

However, not every business owner is aware of the influence of the Internet. Some of them are middle aged or even seniors. The big age gap made it hard for Kang to persuade them into joining the adventure.

When communicating with some traditional Korean restaurants, where orders are written on a piece of paper and orders can only be paid by cash, Choi encountered the same problem.

Accumulated popularity and fan base help solve the problem. Not only fans help recommend businesses to ToGo626, restaurants are also reaching out to Kang to get their name on the website.

As Kang promised, ToGo626 is helping restaurants with the online ordering and delivery service, as if they have branches in different cities.

RushOrder is trying to bring in more Korean restaurants. As Choi explained, one of their goals “is to provide access to non-Korean speaking people in Koreatown. Introductin them to the food, making it convenient for them…so they can try it out.”

Kang expressed the same feeling for ToGo626.

“This is only a start. A good start, maybe,” he said, “We will start from the 626 code area. After fully developing the market here, we will explore further, providing more choices, more restaurants and more cuisines to our customers.”

 

First time in its 102-year history, Hollywood tycoon Paramount has partnered with China Film Corporation, the country’s largest state-funded film group, to produce a movie about the legends of Marco Polo. The movie will mostly be shot in China, directed by Rob Cohen from Fast and Furious, with Chinese supporting characters speaking Mandarin on set.

What Paramount has been involved now, is the U.S. – China co-production, which is officially recognised by the Chinese government. The co-production projects has been backed up by the Chinese government in the early 2000s, but really gained its popularity after 2011.

Nevertheless, Xiaotian Mao, who represented the Chinese government at the 2014 U.S.- China Film Summit held in Los Angeles, thought the co-production business was far from success.

“So far, I would say I haven’t noticed any successful U.S.- China co-production film,” Mao said in Chinese while giving a speech at the summit.

Despite the discouraged feedback from Chinese official, the ticket to the co-production is already hard to get. To gain the co-production status, films must be licensed by China’s media regulator, which sets rules on the film’s finances. The movie must have a fair amount of filming location in China, and a percentage of Chinese stars in the cast approved by the government. The government also has the right to rip off the co-production label anytime when they find the project is no longer qualified.

Under the tedious rules, the co-production still seems booming with more and more Hollywood studios and investment coming in. Paramount is the fifth oldest surviving film studio in the world, yet the latest newcomer to the co-production game.

“Sometimes I woke up in a cold sweat, picturing myself 20 years ago and asking: why would we do that?” said Mark Badagliacca, Paramount’s executive Vice President and CFO. Badgliacca has served the company for more than 30 years and recently just got back from China, where the details of this co-production project has been finalized. “But they (the Chinese filmmakers) are willing to learn from us and we also need the access to the Chinese market.”

 

The tricky land of profit

Hollywood may have found another treasure land more than six thousand miles away in China. It was only from January to November 2014 that 11 Hollywood movies have made to the top 20 China box office list, with a total accumulative record of RMB 7.9 billion ($1.28 billion U.S. dollars).

The latest movie from the Transformers franchises, Transformers: Age of Extinction, is the most successful Hollywood blockbuster in China this year. From its world premiere in Hong Kong, which was also a first for Hollywood, it has swept the China silver screen. The movie has topped both annual and opening week box office record in China. Despite its flat performance in north America, Transformers: Age of Extinction still became the 19^th movie that has a billion dollar box office sales in the history. According to China’s film consultant Entgroup, over 30% of the ticket sales came from China.

 

According to the statistics from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the North America theatrical market has experienced nearly zero growth last decade. Meanwhile, China has become the world’s second largest movie market with a steady and rapid annual increase. In 2013, China’s box offices pulled in RMB 21.6 billion ($3.17 billion), a 27% increase from 2012. In China, there are 13 new cinemas opening in China each day according to MPAA, which in recent years has helped boost box office sales.

Still, China remains a tricky place for the Hollywood filmmakers to do business.

The success of Transformers: Age of Extinction is rare. A number of productions coming from Hollywood never made it to release in China, due to the government’s strict control. The government keeps a tight grip on foreign films that are shown in the country, requiring everything from preliminary script approval to sign off on the final cut. Foreign film releases are limited to 34 per year.

 

A path to the triple-win?

Despite how tedious the process of a co-production could be, the benefits, however, may be worth the pain. A co-production gets to keep 47 percent of box office receipts, while the imported films only get as little as 13.5 percent. Most importantly, the co-production doesn’t need to go through the release quota control set for the foreign movies by the Chinese government.

Chinese investors, on the other hand, have noticed the profit margin and eager to join the co-production game. Early 2014, Dalian Wanda Group said it is in talks to acquire a stake in Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. Alibaba Group’s Chairman Jack Ma paid a visit to Hollywood in October 2014, seeking alliances.

In recent years, Chinese government has vowed to grow the nation’s “soft power”. “The stories of China should be well told, voices of China well spread, and characteristics of China well explained”, said China’s President Xi Jinping in the 2014 new-year speech. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, scholars interpreted the new-year speech as a signal of political purpose for the government’s willingness to promote China’s culture and systems with Hollywood’s competence.

The propaganda mission of Chinese government, the eagerness of Hollywood studios to get access to the Chinese market, the desire of Chinese learning the Hollywood expertise in film and making profit… Co-production seems able to simultaneously work in line with all the agendas.

In 2014, there are more than 60 co-production applications sending to the media regulation department in China. But judging from the previous performance of co-production out in the real market, a strong possibility for disappointment remains.

 

The dilemma

The frequent box office failure of the U.S.- China co-production have brought the first wave of disappointment.

China’s web content provider Sina.com has put a collection of the co-production movies that bombed at the box office. Man of Tai Chi, which is Hollywood star Keanu Reeve’s directorial debut, ranked No.9 at the list. The movie made ¥ 27 million RMB ($4.3 million) in China and only $0.1 million in North America, leaving a huge loss of more than $ 20 million uncovered.

In the co-production business, some stories have utilized the benefits of the Chinese partner’s involvement with a story appealing to both the Chinese and North American audience, such as the Karate Kid (2010), made by Columbia Pictures and China Film Group in 2010, grossed $358 million in ticket sales worldwide. By contrast, the Chinese version of High School Musical, made by Huayi with Walt Disney the same year, earned less than $155,000. It is not an easy job to anticipate the audience’s preference and get the formula right.

“By far the biggest challenge for the co-production is finding the right story to tell,” said Robert Cain, who runs Chinafilmbiz.com and is a consultant to producers and others doing business in China. “Mostly they film stories that has been suitable for either the Chinese audience, or for the international audience, but not for both.”

Chinese authorities’ vague regulation has become another major challenge for the practice of co-production. There are no specific rules of the percentage for either the investment or the casting coming from China written in paper. The application may get approved smoothly; but the authorities can take the co-production title away in the milddle, or disapprove the final work after censorship and put the movie back to the “imported” category.

In response to the vague regulation, Hollywood blockbusters like Iron Man 3 chose to ignore the official co-production process. Instead of waiting in the line for co-production approval, “the film is challenging conventional wisdom about how best to tap China’s lucrative but tightly controlled film market”, quoted from the report by the Wall Street Journal.

“Generally speaking, the U.S.- China co-production is not a success,” said Stanley Rosen, political professor at University of Southern California specializing in Chinese politics and society. Rosen thinks there are two major reasons that lead to this failure; one is the tighter co-production policy from Chinese government; the other is that U.S. and China actually join the co-production with different purposes- China wants propaganda and experience, while Hollywood simply just wants to make profit.

 

A future of uncertainty

After years’ of development, the U.S.- China co-production has encountered with the bottleneck.

Robert Cain thinks it is possible to find better co-production story ideas through increasing the Chinese team’s film literacy and enhancing the quality of communication. After better stories ideas being made, the Chinese government censorship will become the next biggest obstacle on the way.

“If the censorship rules stay the same, it will be always hard to do co-productions,” said Cain. “The creative people in China don’t like the rules either. I think a government as strong don’t really need that kind of protection; but I don’t know if the censorship rules going to change in the future.”

Meanwhile, rumor goes on and off about the possible quota increase by the Chinese authorities to let more foreign productions in. China signed an agreement on its current quota system with the World Trade Organization in 2012, valid for five years. This means the second round of negotiations will start around Feb. 17, 2017.

It is uncertain for either the change for the co-production rules or an increase on the film import quota. The only thing people may know for sure, is that China has a huge film market with great potential.

According to an Ernst & Young report on China’s media and entertainment industry in 2013, China, which now stands as the second-largest film market in the world after Japan, will surpass the U.S. and become the biggest film market by 2020.

 Data retrieved from Ernst & Young

Facing China, the under-developed huge market with uncertainty, there are several options opening for the Hollywood filmmakers. It may be a good idea for the Hollywood studios to get a better understanding is role and keep involving in the co-production; it may also be a wise choice for the filmmakers to work with the storylines, avoiding sensitive elements, in order to get a bigger chance to release the works in China when the door opens up a little bit more.

For Paramount, the choice is doing whatever they can to get the access to the Chinese market, according to Mark Badagliacca.

“I think it is best for us to do everything we could; we are even going to make films in China for the Chinese audience only,” said Badagliacca. “China is a giant market; and it is something really have an impact on us.”