Fang Shihun and the business behind the order

Fang Shihun had a small complication in his job description: he was the boss, and several of the people he managed had more experience than he did. At a gathering of entrepreneurs in 2018, the Shiheng founder described himself as among the youngest members of his own management team. Colleagues had come from large companies. They brought knowledge he wanted. Managing them too closely risked getting in its way.

His answer was to give capable people principles, a framework and performance targets, then step back. It sounds pleasantly economical. Anyone who has hired an expert and subsequently explained the expert’s job to them will appreciate the difficulty. Fang was learning to make room for other people’s judgment while building a company whose business depended on supplying judgment to restaurants.

That business occupied an easily overlooked space. Customers saw a restaurant on a screen and placed an order. Shiheng worked on the decisions behind that screen: what to sell, how to present it, when to promote it and how to keep the operation moving. Fang had found a company in the distance between appearing online and functioning there.

A student with a second timetable

Before restaurant menus came university applications. Fang studied in the United States and graduated from Emory University. While studying abroad, he began an education consultancy with friends, serving Chinese students seeking overseas study. The team operated mainly in Shanghai. His own experience had put him close to a problem other families were trying to solve.

By 2015, Shanghai Pingyuan Education had reached annual sales exceeding RMB25 million and net profit exceeding RMB10 million. It was a substantial business to have built so young. He nevertheless questioned how much room the sector offered for further expansion. A profitable company had given him experience; it had also given him a reason to think about the limits of a market.

He established the advertising business Pu Yang in 2015. Then a friend drew his attention to food delivery. Fang investigated a market in which restaurants could reach customers beyond their dining rooms, provided they could learn to operate through a very different shop window. By 2017, he was building Shiheng.

The second front door

A restaurant’s dining room offers clues about how to behave. There is a door, a table, a menu and usually someone who knows where the cutlery lives. A delivery listing compresses the invitation into a few pictures, prices and choices. The food still has to be made, packed and delivered. The customer encounters the business through another set of arrangements.

Shiheng offered operators help with those arrangements. Its services included platform management, promotions, logistics coordination, reporting and data analysis. Its work covered channels including Ele.me, Meituan delivery and WeChat delivery. A restaurant brand could hire people whose working day was devoted to the online operation.

Fang’s co-founder Wang Taizhou brought experience from inside a platform. Wang had joined Ele.me in 2011 and worked on its development before helping establish Shiheng. Their partnership joined Fang’s entrepreneurial background to a colleague’s knowledge of the machinery through which restaurants were now selling. The platform and the merchant had related interests, but different jobs to do.

For a founder, that position comes with a particular discipline. The client already has a name, a menu and customers. An outside operator has to fit into an existing business and earn its place there. The work is judged through another company’s storefront. Shiheng’s own brand often sits behind the brand that a diner recognizes.

The menu needed more than a photograph

One early customer example shows the scale of the assignment. A Taiwanese restaurant brand had reached a plateau in its delivery sales. Shiheng worked on bundles, delivery capacity, the service area and opening hours. The company described an 84 percent increase in transaction value after three months. It was an individual customer example, with several changes made together.

The interesting detail is how many of those changes were ordinary operating decisions. A bundle helped someone buy a meal in one go. A longer opening window created more occasions to order. Delivery arrangements affected whether the purchase could be completed satisfactorily. None required inventing an appetite.

The example gives Fang’s business a useful human scale. A hungry customer should not need to understand an operator’s systems. Someone still has to take responsibility for the choices those systems present. Shiheng sold that work to brands whose attention was already divided among kitchens, shops and staff.

Experience acquired a limit

As Shiheng added customers, relying on experienced employees alone became difficult. However capable a person might be, there was a limit to the information they could hold and use. Fang faced a familiar founder’s decision: spend on a system before its immediate financial return was clear, or keep stretching the arrangements already in place.

He chose to invest in data development. That required recruiting specialists and accepting costs during the company’s early expansion. The appeal of experience is that it arrives ready to work. The appeal of a shared system is that what the business learns can travel farther than the person who first learned it. Shiheng needed both.

By September 2018, it had completed a B1 round exceeding RMB100 million, led by existing investor Sequoia Capital China, with Gaorong and Vision Plus participating. By March 2019, the business described a customer base of more than 300 restaurant chains and operations in 100 Chinese cities. Those figures belong to that period of expansion.

When everybody stops fitting in one conversation

Expansion gave Fang another information problem, this time inside the company. In 2019, he contrasted a business of 200 people with one of 700 or more spread across multiple offices. A founder’s values were easier to communicate in the smaller organization. More employees meant more distance for an idea to travel, and more opportunities for its meaning to change.

His interest in management had a bookish side. He read history as well as management books, looking for principles about employing people. At the 2018 summit, he also described quarterly reviews of whether employees suited their positions. Behind the reading was a practical concern about how to arrange a team.

“我经常会去读一些历史书或者是管理学的书”

Fang Shihun, 2018
“I often read history or management books.” Translation.

Recruiting became a reason to leave the office. In August 2019, Fang visited Nantong University to discuss cooperation and the company’s need for talent. The meeting covered links between employment, internships and practical experience. It was a quieter milestone than a financing announcement, but a growing operations business needed people who could actually do the operating.

From the menu to the cup

His next venture moved into the products themselves. Plantag, established in 2020, developed plant-based drinks for food-service customers and consumers. Its early range included a one-liter oat beverage designed for coffee, tea and bakery channels. Direct-drink products followed, including oat, pistachio and black sesame varieties.

The change was considerable. Selling an operating service and selling an ingredient ask different things of a company. Yet the customer landscape had a familiar shape: cafés, restaurant businesses, chains and the practical question of what they could offer consistently. Fang was working around the food trade from another position.

By 2022, his work at Plantag had brought another entrepreneurial recognition, inclusion in the X·36 Under 36 selection. In 2023, he explained a choice embedded in the brand’s name. Plantag had left itself room to develop beyond oats. Different plant ingredients could support different drinks. He treated the breadth of that name as part of the product strategy.

The naming decision is a small detail with consequences. An oat drink describes a product precisely. A name built around plants can accommodate a buyer asking about another ingredient. Each additional product still has to earn its place, but the sign above the business does not require replacing every time the range changes.

A broader range, a longer view

Chain businesses mattered to that strategy. Fang saw an opportunity in customers becoming less fragmented: a relationship with a chain could connect a supplier to a larger network. He also discussed looking further upstream, including factory investment. A beverage company’s plans eventually have to reach the place where its beverages are made.

By January 2024, Plantag’s range included oat and rice drinks, coconut products and fruit juices. Fang was identified as its founder and CEO. The progression gives his earlier restaurant experience a different setting. Having helped businesses manage what appeared on a delivery menu, he was now building a company whose products could become part of the offer.

In March 2024, he chose a concise word for the previous year: 熬, enduring or getting through. He described consumer demand weakening later in 2023. It is a more restrained entry in an entrepreneurial biography than another funding round, and a useful one. A founder can choose a product range; customers retain the privilege of choosing what to buy.

Years earlier, Fang had spoken about wanting an enduring company and giving restaurant owners more room to concentrate on their products. His own career kept returning to the work around that promise. The application, the menu, the team and eventually the drink each needed attention. After the customer makes a choice, somebody still has a business to run.