Many big restaurant point-of-sale companies could be considered generalists. Whether a restaurant is a taco place, coffee shop or pizza parlor, they probably view it as a potential customer.
Chowbus, on the other hand, has always been a specialist. Its technology is designed specifically for Asian concepts, which make up a significant and fast-growing chunk of the restaurant industry.
This targeted strategy has paid off. Chowbus’ annual recurring revenue has increased by 900% over the past four years, to more than $120 million, and it just raised $81 million to keep expanding.
“Now if you go to a Chinatown, probably 70% of restaurants are using us,” said CEO Linxin Wen in an interview.
Wen came to the U.S. from China in 2013 to get his masters degree in business. After graduating, he and co-founder Suyu Zhang wanted to start a business that would help immigrants, and they decided on the emerging sector of restaurant delivery.
Initially, Chowbus helped mom-and-pop Asian restaurants with the basics, like taking high-quality photos of their food for the web. It later began offering third-party delivery services, focusing on markets dense with Asian concepts.
It grew quickly enough to land a $33 million Series A round in June 2020, the thick of the pandemic. But it soon found that in order to compete with larger competitors like DoorDash, it would need to ask restaurants for higher commissions and promotional spending, which it didn’t want to do.
Wen had also noticed that most of its customers were using older POS systems, and believed Chowbus could offer them more modern technology that was tailored to their needs. Chowbus launched that in 2022, and in 2024, it got out of the delivery business and made the POS its sole focus.
The Asian restaurant market is diverse. It encompasses more than 30 cuisine types, Wen said, from sushi to Korean barbecue, Chinese buffets and boba tea, each with a unique service model.
“Each cuisine type has their own operational nuance in terms of how they order the food, how they send it to the kitchen and how they calculate employees’ salary,” Wen said. “The reason we’ve found success in this vertical is we understand them the most and we built the best product for them.”
For instance, at Korean barbecue concepts, customers typically will add dishes to their order throughout the meal, which can be inefficient for staff. Chowbus offers a tablet ordering option that streamlines this process. It also developed a tool that limits how much customers can order in “all-you-can-eat” situations.
“If you just allow the customer to order whatever they want, the food costs will go up,” Wen said. With Chowbus, “You can limit how many items the customer can submit for every round of ordering and what’s the ordering interval and also the total dining time.”
Not only does Chowbus’ product reflect the needs of its customer base, but so does the makeup of the company itself. Chowbus employees are bilingual, which allows them to connect better with operators who may speak little to no English.
“I think bilingual is by default to serve immigrant restaurants,” Wen said. “They always prefer to speak to someone who speaks their language and understands their culture.”
Its tech, meanwhile, can be configured in Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese.
Chowbus’ growth has dovetailed with a surge of interest in Asian culture in the U.S., evident in the growing popularity of imports like K-pop music, Labubu plush toys and, yes, Asian restaurant chains. Concepts such as BBQ Chicken, Paris Baguette and KPot Korean BBQ—a Chowbus customer—have seen double-digit growth in recent years.
Chowbus now works with more than 3,000 brands and nearly 10,000 locations, and plans to use its latest fundraise to allow it to capture more of that growing market. It currently has a presence in all major U.S. cities, Wen said, but plans to hire more sales reps in second- and third-tier cities as well as the suburbs.
It will also invest in developing new products, including a suite of AI-powered tools. Its first entry is an AI advertising tool that automates Google ad placements for operators.
The $81 million round is Chowbus’ fourth fundraise since 2020, and it has now raised $281 million to support its POS business.
The company’s large addressable market and its progress on AI are what caught the attention of Prysm Capital and Left Lane Capital, which led the latest capital infusion.
“Chowbus is leveraging AI to enter these massive service areas, providing 10x better efficiency than traditional solutions, while maintaining the essential human touch required in the hospitality industry,” said Harley Miller, CEO of Left Lane, in a statement. “By moving beyond software to become a true operating partner, they're helping these restaurants compete at a level previously reserved for chains.”
Chowbus faces a lot of competition in the POS market for independent restaurants, particularly large and established suppliers like Toast, Square and SpotOn. But the company believes it is in a category of one.
“We’re truly the only cloud-based, modern POS for Asian restaurants specifically,” Wen said. “That’s our unique market positioning.”