Tsao began to offer family meal packages to suburban subscribers, effectively bringing Chinatown to them. He also invited other restaurant accounts to be on his website, most of them in Chinatown. Tsao’s restaurants EMei and GTH–Tsao’s new restaurant with business partner Eric Rosenfeld–are also included on the site.
Three months later, the new venture was being used by more than 35 restaurants. Nine months later it was serving more than 2,000 families.
That’s how RiceVan, a grocery and takeout delivery service that takes suburban orders up to 60 miles away within the tri-state region, started.
From there, it’s also evolved as a way to pay homage to Tsao’s immigrant roots.
Over the past three months, RiceVan has been providing daily lunch and dinner, and weekly grocery service to several hundred refugees living in temporary housing in Center City. Nationalities Service Center, the largest refugee resettlement agency in Philadelphia, pays for the meals. The business also has five refugee employees, three of whom are full time.
Tsao arrived here as an immigrant from China more than 20 years ago.
“Both myself as an immigrant and the refugees, we share the challenge of a language barrier and cultural barriers,” he says. “For them, career, and education for [their] kids—there’s going to be a journey.”..


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