Our Story

At Tso Chinese Takeout & Delivery, we have created one of the most exciting delivery and takeout only restaurant concepts in Texas. Offering a no tipping policy and no service fees, we offer one of the most affordable delivery services of fresh Chinese food, anywhere. We’re able to execute this by working on a cloud kitchen platform (aka ghost kitchen or virtual kitchen), which has enabled us to lower operating expenses and pay lower lease rates, allowing us to pass the savings along to our customers. Chinese-American food is the second most popular cuisine in the United States, falling only behind to pizza, in the food delivery sector. With no meaningful direct competition, it is our goal to become America’s #1 choice for Chinese food delivery and takeout. Pictured below is our most popular dish, and our namesake, General Tso Chicken.

How it began…

In 2005, husband and wife team, Min & Jenna Choe, started their first Chinese restaurant in West Austin. They quickly fell in love with the restaurant business, and thus began their entrepreneur journey in the restaurant industry. Fast forward to 2016, after multiple restaurant concepts (and three children), they found there was a sweet spot for Chinese food in the Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) industry. Min also knew that the formula for success in this specific line of business would flourish in a cloud kitchen concept, where delivery and takeout were the only options. But in order to achieve this, they needed great software. Min asked Angell to team up, and build a software platform that would allow Tso full control of the front end, back end, kitchen and delivery logistics. Angell is a highly accomplished software engineer, with a hyper keen sense in quality assurance and software management. In 2016, the vision was set, and the partners began building the framework that would become Tso Chinese Takeout & Delivery… with children in tow (see image below).

Tsoftware

It was April, 2016. Angell began searching for over-the-counter solutions to build an online ordering platform, piecemeal a back end, and integrate delivery logistics. Surely, a shopify slash wordpress slash pos system would allow us to build a less than ideal, but fully functioning website. To our dismay, it didn’t exist. Angell approached and said, “Min, we need to build our own.” Our software budget went from $30k to $300k overnight and would take one year, instead of two months, to build. It was heart-breaking and dream-shattering… so naturally, we jumped in with two feet, borrowed some money from some generous friends & family, found a great engineering team, and started building our business, brick by brick, or rather, line by line of code. Pictured below, is a screenshot of v2 of the Tso dispatch control.

Grand Opening

On August 23, 2017, Tso Chinese Takeout & Delivery would open its doors for the first time. To our own disbelief, the service was an instant success, as reflected by having a profitable first month. A few months pass, and we’re seeing sales grow at a sharp rate, and in 2018, our first full year in operations, we had $1.56MM in sales, nearly double our projections. Sales were staggering and operations were in full force. The service had gone viral in Central Austin. Business was so good, all paid marketing was suspended, and we focused on improving delivery times and efficiency. We had our highs and lows, both in operations and software, but they were all ‘good problems’ which arose from strong growth and sales. As Confucius once most likely uttered, “When life gives you oranges, make Orange Beef (pictured below).”

Expansion: Tso Arbor

2018 and the first half of 2019 was a huge success for the first Tso location, Tso Cherrywood. It was now time to test the scalability of what we built. After months of looking for the right location, we found a spot in northwest Austin in a struggling shopping center… but for our concept, where foot traffic and fancy facades aren’t valued, the location was perfect! We found an architect, a general contractor, we had some cash in our bank, and we went for it. It took a few months longer than anticipated, but we opened Tso #2 on September 14, 2019. We bought the safest, most affordable cars out there, 2020 Toyota Corollas, had them wrapped in cool Tso graphics, and started delivering food to our new neighbors (delivery map for Tso Arbor pictured below).

Tsogiving

At the start of 2020, we expanded our Tsogiving initiative that would inspire a series of events and drive community awareness to those in need. Tsogiving was created by the four founders of Tso who saw a great need in our local community and sought to help ease the burden of those in unfortunate circumstances while promoting community participation. Through our websites and social media, we began offering ways for the public to donate to Helping Feed Austin, a charitable platform aimed at making sure “No one should go hungry”. From that point on, we started our first of a continuous series of free meal drive-throughs, the 50k for Teachers campaign, continued outreach to families facing financial hardships during school closures, masks with meals drive, and so many other drive-through food giveaways.

Expansion: TsoCo

2021 ended with a bang as we opened our third location in such an exciting area! Not only did we get to open up in a highly requested south Austin location, we got to meet many new faces in the community! We had a wonderful time designing the layout to be both customer and employee centric with a modern twist. Inside features a large mural of a map of Austin that just really showed how much we have grown as a city and how much we love that we had the opportunity to start here in the heart of Texas.

Expansion: Round Rock

It is an immense honor to announce that we have officially opened our doors to our first location in Round Rock, Texas. Our grand opening was packed and full of excitement from both us and our guests! Even dragons showed up! We are very grateful for the warm welcome we have received thus far from both the residents and local businesses. We’re all tso thrilled to contribute to the growth and development of this remarkable community!