Stories of Tanggramer 9.0: Don’t forget to step in and say “Hi”

As the name implies, Stories of Tanggramer is our special edition to tell stories of Tanggram’s customers and merchants all across Australia after they joined Tanggram.

Today I would like to tell some stories about our merchants. They’re an indispensable part of the Tanggram ecosystem.

During the pandemic, we introduced our Group Buy function in the app to support our merchants to generate more sales through our channel. We do not want to simply list their products and advertise them to our users, but we would like to build connections between our merchants and users.

Through this inspiration, we did a series of interviews with our merchants and produced many articles about their stories.

Today let us step into their stories.

There’s a little restaurant “ZIWEIYUAN” sitting next to the Monash University campus in Melbourne. It has 9 years of history and has accompanied many people’s college life. The owner of this restaurant is kindly called “Uncle” by many students

“ZIWEIYUAN” was started nine years ago, the cuisines are from Guangzhou in China.

“The beginning of the store was very difficult, my mom and dad didn’t know English, and at that time there wasn’t an authentic Cantonese Shunde cuisine in Australia, even more, there weren’t many Chinese restaurants. At that time, my mom and dad were looking through the newspaper and found this location. At that time, we were the only Chinese restaurant on the whole street.”

“We hardly did any advertising at that time, every customer was brought by word of mouth. People started to learn about us and started to love us.” Told by Jessie, as “Uncle” hardly can speak any English.

“My father insisted on doing only Shunde dishes for so many years. Shunde dishes have very complex processes, but he always adheres to the most traditional practices, so every dish is very time-consuming slow, and carefully cooked.”

Through the commitment, “Uncle” opened his second restaurant based in Melbourne CBD. But the pandemic has ruined the opening of the new restaurant.

The change was very obvious right after the pandemic. Especially the orders for New Year’s Eve, the store could still see many people coming to eat in the first few days, but after the outbreak, customers began to call one after another to cancel the booking, and sales were greatly affected.

After the lockdown, “ZIWEIYUAN” was closed for about three weeks so they could take a break. Jessie, however, later ran the storefront for the duration of the outbreak. That’s when they shifted their mindset and started to focus on takeaways, and actively participating in various online group buys. What struck me was that every time our user ordered on the Tanggram app, the takeaway came with a heart-warming note. In addition to teaching us how to eat Shunde food properly, the last sentence impressed me: “When the epidemic is over, I hope to see you and serve you again in store appreciate for this long time support”.

“While others are learning from us, we have already started to take a new path and develop more dishes. And we will stick to our own heart, stick to our own style and way of cooking, and keep it as long as we could.”

This is what we believe is precious. Our merchants are not the only entity that delivers services to our users, but they value each other. Indeed they’re our friendly neighborhood.

We would like our users to get to know more about their favorite restaurants, the love they have put in, the effort they commit to bringing the delicious dishes. Maybe after the lockdown they can walk into the store and say “Hi” to Jessie and “Uncle”, and ask how’s their day has been.

What we want to deliver is not a product, it’s the joint that delivers love and warmness. This is what truly “support” means. At Tanggram, we want love to be an emotion experienced by many and also shared by many.

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