Food delivery-focused new retail brand "Zuo Da Shi" has raised tens of millions of RMB in an angel round led by Gaorong Ventures.

On January 2, 2019, Zuodash — a food retail brand for food delivery — announced it had completed a tens-of-millions-of-RMB angel round led by Gaorong Ventures, with Dianliang Fund participating. The company said the funds would go toward product R&D, channel expansion, and brand building.

Founded in November 2018, Zuodash pioneered an innovative model for single-serve meal accompaniments in food delivery. By developing deep insights into the food-delivery dining experience, the company enlisted top food experts to source the best condiments and side dishes worldwide, offering restaurants food-delivery retail solutions and providing consumers with single-serve accompaniments. At the time, Zuodash had already launched two products — dried fish chili sauce and appetizing pickled vegetables — and signed contracts with 20 major restaurant chains, covering nearly 10,000 locations nationwide.

Zuodash founder and CEO Zhenkai Dai was previously a vice president at Ele.me and head of the trading platform division, where he managed over 100 billion RMB in transaction volume across 2,000 cities. Dai explained that roughly 80% of food-delivery orders are simple meals, and single-serve accompaniments — sauces, side dishes, soups — are a crucial component. These items improve the consumer experience and create room for higher pricing. Platform data showed that food-delivery items paired with quality accompaniments performed significantly better on metrics like average order value and repurchase rates.

At the time, there was no standardized solution for accompaniments in food delivery. Traditional condiment brands served family dining and in-restaurant consumption, emphasizing value for money, whereas the delivery context demanded single-serve convenience and pairing compatibility across different cuisines. Many delivery merchants recognized the importance of accompaniments but lacked the expertise to curate flavors and the industrial capability to scale production; subpar packaging also prevented them from commanding premium prices. Additionally, traditional accompaniment workflows relied on manual labor, creating high costs and inefficiencies.

Zuodash's mission is "making food delivery taste better." The company focuses on curating and developing accompaniment products, aiming to find the ideal pairing for every food-delivery category. Barriers to entry in this space include: first, insight into the delivery scene — understanding how to select and develop products that complement different cuisines, and how to design packaging for single-serve delivery contexts; second, channel capability — specifically, the ability to reach and enter 8 million restaurants and operate on delivery platforms; third, brand building — creating a visually appealing, high-quality accompaniment brand for the new generation of consumers.

Zuodash's team held clear advantages in flavor research and channel development. Its food experts included culinary consultants for programs like A Bite of China and The Taste of China, with renowned food critic Keping Dong serving as chief culinary officer. The company extracted and deconstructed top accompaniment flavors nationwide, then standardized and industrialized them — going from flavor capture to product launch in just 15 days. Its product development and supply chain team brought over 20 years of industry experience. The channel team comprised former core executives from Meituan and Ele.me with experience opening and managing channels across thousands of cities. Within two weeks of launching channel expansion, Zuodash had signed 20 major restaurant chains covering nearly 10,000 locations. The company planned to start with super brands before gradually expanding to smaller chain merchants.

Zuodash founding team

Dai described Zuodash's strategy for the broader food-delivery ecosystem as the "popcorn strategy." When movie theaters realized ticket sales alone couldn't improve revenue per square meter, they developed the "movie + popcorn" scene-based selling approach; Zuodash provides the equivalent "popcorn" for all restaurants in the delivery context. The accompaniment market approaches one trillion RMB, but the opportunity extends further. After securing enough merchant partners, Zuodash planned to introduce higher-margin standardized single-serve items like braised snacks and packaged treats to further improve restaurant revenue per square meter. Beyond restaurants, Zuodash would also collaborate closely with delivery platforms and merchant service providers, using these channels to get products into restaurants.

Zuodash is headquartered in Shanghai. The founding partnership also includes Ji Li, former special assistant to the CFO at Meituan and national commercial strategy lead for a business division; Xiao Gu, former Meituan regional general manager and Ele.me national chain operations lead; Yinghong Zhou, former Meituan division product and operations lead and Ele.me national business operations SFE lead; Lu Yang, former regional general manager at both Meituan and Ele.me; Liting Wang, former CIO of the well-known chain brand "Mijie"; Hongjian Zhu, former senior developer at Huawei and EZBUY; and Yili Zhao, former national training lead at Meiyongbudeng.

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