Spotlight #1: Shuttle delivery - Jason Boutte
What it takes to start a food delivery business in Korea
Foreword
It is Dima from the Seoul Startups community here. I know it’s been a while since the last newsletter was out (~1.5 years). This one is the first post to focus on impressive startups and founders in Korea. I hope you enjoy 🙂.
About the company
Shuttle Delivery is a food solution platform. It is a customer-facing platform that connects people to restaurants in their area and allows them to schedule a pickup or get food delivered.
Their easy-to-use interface makes it effortless to browse photo menus from local restaurants, see reviews, connect to your favourites, and get just about everything you could want to eat.
Their website https://www.shuttledelivery.co.kr/en
About the Founder:
Born and raised in the US, Jason Boutte’s journey to South Korea is nothing short of extraordinary:
Upon receiving his Bachelor's degree in finance (Louisiana State University), he yearned for international adventure and followed one of his friends abroad. His mate was stationed in a US military base in South Korea then, so that’s how the story starts.
Jason started by working at Konyang university (2009) before becoming a promoter for nightlife establishments and events (2011). Seeing how much money he was making for others, Mr Boutte and his friends decided to open their bar.
As a frequent client of late-night takeaways, he noticed that delivery options were limited to staple foods (jjajangmyeon, pizza etc.). Hence, he set out to create Ynot-Takeout (2014) so people could get food from their favourite restaurants. When the food delivery space got iron hot with competition from Yogiyo, and Baemin, it felt like the writing is on the wall. Hence, Jason decided on a merger with his competitor at the time Zachary Marble, founder of Bird Riders Delivery.
Thus, Shuttle Delivery was born. The rest is history :)
Interested to learn more? Why not check out a brilliant podcast by our friends at Korea Startup Podcast, who recently interviewed Jason:
Episode #3: A solid example of a successful foreigner-founded startup in Korea
Anchor FM link
Relevant links 🔗:
Jason’s LinkedIn
Article about Shuttle from the Korea Times
Shuttle Delivery website, 🍏 App Store, ▶️ Google Play
Jason is so cool, when I reached out saying that I’m writing an article, he offered to give ₩5,000 credit to use at Checkout with the code SEOULSTARTUPS. What a lad
Announcements
We have an online event coming up on Thu (Jan 26th, 2023) at 8 pm KST.
It will dive deep into the topic of Startup Visas. You can expect a fireside chat with 2 founders who hold OASIS Visas:
Christian Piponides, founder of Ftero Designs
Chris Georgiev, co-founder of Imagga & Kelvin Health
You can get a Zoom link and calendar invite on Eventbrite (https://www.eventbrite.com/e/oasis-visa-qa-tickets-498656012557 )