Wok Xpress: New food option coming to Moosomin
January 8, 2024, 9:17 am
Kevin Weedmark
Very soon, people in Moosomin with a craving for American-style Chinese food will be able to order it for delivery or pickup with the addition of a new business in Moosomin—Wok Xpress.
The new business is the idea of Dan Davidson, the owner of the Red Barn.
Wok Xpress will be operated out of the Red Barn, however the food can only be ordered online using an app or website for delivery or pickup. There will be no dine-in or call-in option.
The menu will consist of six to seven key main dishes, four side dish options, and a number of appetizers.
Davidson says the idea is to offer a small menu of American-style Chinese food that can be prepared quickly, is made-in house with fresh ingredients, and is extremely tasty and well done.
His main dishes will consist of orange chicken, kung pao chicken, beef and broccoli, honey walnut shrimp, black pepper chicken, and crispy fried tofu with broccoli. Side dish options will include fried rice, white rice, chow mein, or mixed vegetables.
“We’ll have six to seven entrees and four sides. We’re going to try to be very good at a small number of items, but when you can make different combinations, that’s all we feel we need,” says Davidson. “We thought let’s go hard on six items and do an amazing job on these six items. Let’s try to be really good at a small number of items.”
Six main entrees
Davidson wants Orange Chicken to become known as their signature dish, but he is proud of all the entrees.
“What we want to be known for is orange chicken. We bring in cases of fresh oranges. It’s made from squeezing oranges, and using the rinds to help give you flavor in the sauce.
“For the meat, we have a process that starts the day before that makes it extremely tender and it crisps up beautifully even after it’s sauced.
“For the Kung Pao Chicken you have your fresh peppers and roasted peanuts. We’re doing everything from scratch.
“Honey walnut shrimp is something we played with a little bit. We sugar our own half-walnuts. It’s a thin crispy coating on the shrimp so it stays crispy once it has sauce on it.
“The black pepper chicken is unbelievable. I think people are really going to like it, if they like a little bit of heat.
“The beef and broccoli, what makes the difference is the meat, it’s the kind of meat we’re buying, it’s the process of preparing the meat, it’s hand cut and done the day before. It has a beautiful flavor. I’m extremely proud of that one.
“Crispy fried tofu with broccoli. I said we have to figure out how can we take care with a vegetarian or vegan person, so we’re bringing in blocks of tofu, we cube it, it’s brined and coated, then fried.”
Combinations
Customers will be able to make different combinations of the dishes.
“Your first option is a bowl,” Davidson explains. “You get one side for the base and one entree. So you can have white rice, fried rice, chow mein, or fresh cut vegetables, and one of the entrees on top. But when you pick a side, you can pick one or go 50/50, so you could say ‘I want all fried rice as my base, or you can have fried rice and vegetables, with an entree, say orange chicken, on top.
“When you go to order, it will be extremely easy.
“In addition to the bowl, you can have the plate, with a side and two entrees, so fried rice, chow mein, orange chicken, and beef and broccoli. Then there is a larger plate, one side and three entrees.
“You can also buy a la carte, small medium and large boxes in the entrees, and just medium and large for the sides. We have a family meal, two large sides, three large entrees.”
“There will also be catering options.
“There will also be appetizers and desserts including handmade cheese rangoons that are dipped in sweet and sour sauce.”
Wok Xpress solution to a problem
Davidson says the idea for Wok Xpress came about because of the pandemic and the way it changed the restaurant industry.
“The pandemic has really changed the restaurant industry,” he says. “I think a big thing is just trying to innovate and we found with the pandemic it forced us to look at new ways to grow. How can we grow our revenue and grow for the future of my long-term staff? Because when you retain a lot of people what is your plan? How can they grow with you?
“The pandemic did bring out delivery. I do have Edo Japans and have a lot of experience with the integrated delivery, and it was occupying almost 40 per cent of sales in those style of restaurants.
“We saw here in Moosomin that American-style Chinese food was a big hole that needed to be filled. I knew we had a kitchen and ghost kitchens were starting to become bigger things in the city. They use spaces in existing kitchens or spaces to produce food that is only on online platforms.
“It’s another way to get more sales out the back door. You are starting to see a little more of that because people have to find ways to grow because costs are going up and you have to grow you revenue. Less people are dining out.
“We have to scale the Red Barn’s delivery, too, so this fits. One car is extremely difficult, and to staff the one car is difficult, but when you scale things you can handle it differently. I would rather run a two to three car system than a one-car system, but you have to make it viable for the people running the cars.
“In scaling the delivery, it has to be all automated. The orders have to find a way directly to the kitchen cook and it has to find a way directly to the phone of the driver, and it has to have GPS to the house. It has to in order to save time and make it work.
“With Wok Xpress, we really have an awesome prep room that is really a ghost kitchen by 4 pm because we have all the prep done in the morning.
“And we have a lack of that kind of food here. The number two delivery in North America is Chinese food. Pizza is number one.”
Kitchen modifications
Davidson decided to modify part of his kitchen at the Red Barn to put in a high pressure wok so that Wok Xpress could become a reality.
“To get a smoky hue you have to use a wok,” he says. “I’ve got some highly skilled cooks who have done a lot of wok cooking before they came to Moosomin. If you cook with a gas stove it can’t get hot enough, whereas a gas wok can heat up and get hot quickly. It’s got 23 jets shooting heat and can heat up to over 700 degrees.
“When you put meat into it, it’s an immediate sear to lock the juices in, and they call it a ‘smoky hue’ to the food when you cook it so fast like that, and you need a high pressure wok to do that.”
Davidson and his staff started working on Wok Xpress a year ago, and they will be adding up to three full-time cooks and a couple of part-time positions to help the business run as well.
Davidson says the key features of Wok Xpress are its small menu, inventory sharing, online ordering feature, delivery driver sharing, and the fact that its orders are prepared separate from the Red Barn front kitchen and creates two separate kitchens serving two totally separate menus at the same time without affecting each other’s service to their customers.
“It’s a very small menu. It’s online only. It’s not going to affect one thing we do inside the Red Barn. It’s 100 per cent independent of the Red Barn, and we are just sharing drivers at our back door,” he says.
“We’re adding three full-time cooks and one student expediter. We’re always staffing three to four every night. We’ll add one extra and they will help with pickup and packaging for takeout.
“This is going to be an option for pickup and delivery. We are going to do catering as well. Delivery will be within Moosomin.
“There is a website and an Apple app and Android app you will be able to download. It is extremely user friendly.
“Everything that we have on our menu travels well because it’s a delivery and takeout menu.”
App will be live soon
Davidson says he hopes to have Wok Xpress filling orders within a few weeks, and he’s excited to see the idea become reality.
“We’ve been working on this and going over things a million different ways.
“As soon as I got the menu printed I got excited. We put the kitchen equipment in, in the middle of December. I’m excited about the final menu. I’m extremely happy with the final choice.
“This business will be open 363 days a year from 4:30 to 8:30 every day, so we are always there. It’s a four-hour window at night, but we are going to be there every day. We just always want to be there knowing that if you want to order Wok Xpress, go on your phone, we’re there, we’re open.”
