If you haven’t heard, food delivery is big. There are companies delivering food on foot, by robot, via car, from restaurants and fast food joints or cooked just for you, and so on and so on.
Noobstaa Phillip Vang, though, saw a gap in the market.
When he was an MBA student at Georgetown, Vang said he missed his mother’s cooking, and it wasn't easy to find options in D.C. for authentic Lao food like what he grew up eating. "I was wishing I could just find an auntie or a grandma in the neighborhood and just buy some of their food," he told DC Inno.
At the same time, as the child of two refugees from Laos, he was familiar with the struggle to find sustainable income that immigrants and refugees often face.
So, he created Foodhini, which launched in October 2016, as a way of bringing the two together.
Foodhini is a mission-driven meal delivery service that employs immigrant and refugee chefs to make dishes from their countries of origin, often what they would cook for their families. The goal is two-fold: serve delicious cuisines, and provide immigrants and refugees a fair job that values the skills they bring to America.
Foodhini became a reality at D.C.'s Halcyon Incubator where the team just left the residency portion of the incubator's program in January. Vang cites being a part of the highly selective program as a “huge catalyst” for him and his team (The program started in June and Foodhini officially launched in October). The service currently serves 120-150 customers per week, at $40 for a meal for two, which are prepared out of Union Kitchen's food incubator.
Vang said typically people find Foodhini because of its mission—customers are looking for good multi-cultural food and with good practices. Foodhini currently offers Syrian cuisine and Laos/Thai food, prepared by their three chefs. Customers order a specific dish prepared by a specific chef, much like San Francisco-based Munchery's model, to create the homemade, customizable feeling.
That connection is something Foodhini hopes will set them apart. But competition is tough with several D.C. meal delivery services in the region, including D.C.-based Galley and Caviar and presences from national apps like GrubHub, DoorDash, and UberEATS.
Moving forward, Vang hopes to add more cuisines to the roster—and one day include at least one dish from every continent—but, of course, that all depends on the chefs he's able to find.
Images courtesy of Foodhini
