Restaurants, importers and cross-border trade on the Pacific coast
Vancouver's Chinese business community is concentrated in Richmond and Burnaby, with restaurants, grocers and importers moving goods between Asia and North America. The shorter time difference with Asia makes supplier communication easier than in eastern Canada, but cross-border pricing and duty still need tracking per consignment.
These are the operating conditions we see in this city, and they decide where the system should start.
Importers need landed cost including freight and duty, and restaurants need ordering that works for both dine-in and delivery. What both share is keeping records continuous when staff change.
PIPEDA applies. Consumer pages must show clear pricing in Canadian dollars, and card payments must meet PCI standards.
These requirements shape data structures, page behaviour and deployment. Each is confirmed at solution stage; formal legal advice should be confirmed with a local adviser.
The services below have delivery records in this city and follow the same process, with milestones and acceptance items agreed before work starts.
Chinese-owned businesses in North America frequently operate entities on both sides of the Pacific, settle in USD and RMB, and face differing state sales tax rules. The system calculates multi-entity accounting, exchange rates, sales tax, platform commissions and refund splits item by item, reducing manual journal adjustments each month. We usually implement orders and funds first, then extend to inventory and staffing.
Users in the United States and Canada expect near-native quality: fast launch, responsive gestures, low crash rates. We prepare privacy manifests, data-use declarations and account-deletion entry points against App Store and Google Play review requirements, so submission is not repeatedly rejected on compliance detail. Common scenarios for Chinese-owned businesses are in-store ordering, loyalty, appointment scheduling and delivery tracking; the engineering priority is graceful handling of weak networks, disconnections and failed payments.
The projects below took place in this city or served clients here, with background, deliverables and outcome stated for each.
Client: Furniture brand in Los Angeles (family-owned, name withheld under NDA)
Acquisition depended on third-party marketplaces with rising commissions and advertising costs. The original template site could not carry the dimensions, materials and delivery terms of large furniture, so customers asked repeatedly before ordering and service cost stayed high. Product data was unstructured, which limited both search and advertising precision.
The site moved from a catalogue to a revenue channel: standardised product fields reduced repeat enquiries, advertising could split landing pages by category and scenario, and content updates no longer depended on an agency.
Client: Chinese restaurant group in New York (six locations, Chinese founding team)
Each location used a different ordering tool and loyalty points did not transfer. Delivery platforms took a high commission while the in-house ordering experience was poor. Head office had no consolidated view of dish sales or margin, and purchasing relied on store managers’ judgement.
Six locations now share one menu and one loyalty programme, and head office can see per-store margin daily. With a larger share of orders placed directly, dependence on platforms fell and promotions could be scheduled on the company’s own terms.
Client: Chinese real estate brokerage team in the San Francisco Bay Area (20+ agents)
Listings arrived from multiple MLS feeds and developers in inconsistent formats. Client follow-up lived in individual agents’ WeChat and spreadsheets, so clients were lost when an agent left. The website listing pages lagged behind, and clients lost confidence on seeing sold properties still advertised.
Listing status and the public website stay consistent, so clients no longer ask whether a property is still available. Client records moved from individual hands into a team asset, and staff turnover no longer takes the relationship with it.
Yes. Dishes and prices are maintained in one place, with availability and packaging fees set per channel, so a price change applies across all channels at once.
Every action is logged against an account, and orders, amendments and refunds trace back to the operator and time, so handover does not depend on personal memory.
Client structures differ between cities in the same region; choose the delivery experience closest to you.
