Umamicart's Andrea Xu on building an online Asian grocery startup

Umamicart is trying to bring authentic Asian grocery items to more U.S. consumers. The app launched in early 2021 and, according to co-founder and CEO Andrea Xu, has been seeing double-digit growth month-over-month. It offers Asian products from sauces to meats to vegetables, growing from 400 SKUs at launch to now over 1,000. Xu joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about the trials and tribulations of growing a digital grocery startup. According to Xu, Umamicart began because of a gap she saw in the market. Namely, for many people it's hard to find Asian-specific grocery items beyond specialized grocery stores that are usually in specific, often metropolitan areas. "If you're lucky enough that you're near an awesome Chinatown, that's super great," said Xu. "But not everybody has that." So, the idea with Umamicart is to bring those types of products to more people. Currently, it is available in 11 states -- with plans for more expansion following a $6 million fundraise that closed in December. But the concept isn't to just bring a large Asian grocery store online. Instead, Xu and her co-founder have been working to partner with small- to medium-sized Asian brands and suppliers to give them another channel to sell their products. "People ask me a lot: 'why can't I buy this at Whole Foods?'" said Xu. "I'm like, well, Whole Foods is not working with the number of suppliers that we're working [with]." Now, the focus is on expansion -- both geographically and product-wise. "We're probably going to at least double our catalog within the next few months," said Xu."Geographically, we also plan to expand. I'm not sure exactly to which exact locations, but we're definitely going to be expanding this year."