Dive Brief:

• Ethnic e-grocer Weee announced on Monday it has brought filmmaker Jon M. Chu on to be chief creative officer.
• Chu, who has directed a number of movies including "Crazy Rich Asians" and "In the Heights," will oversee Weee's in-house creative team, playing a key role in the development and execution of the e-grocer's experience.
• Weee positioned its hiring of Chu as its latest step toward bolstering its "storytelling" around ethnic cuisine and social commerce as the online food retailer continues to rapidly scale. 

Dive Insight:

Along with spotlighting Chu's recent and notable film achievements, Weee also highlighted his background with food, calling him a "lifelong foodie" and noting his family runs Chef Chu's, a Chinese restaurant in the San Francisco Bay Area, where Chu grew up. 

Weee, which sells Asian and Hispanic food, has grown beyond its original focus on Asian groceries to include restaurants. The company is leaning into personalization across its assortment, which includes dedicated digital storefronts for different ethnic cuisines, including Japanese, Korean, Filipino and Latin American options. The e-grocer sells more than 10,000 fresh and shelf-stable items, adds more than 500 new products weekly and works with more than 1,000 restaurants. 

Social commerce plays a starring role in Weee's online experience as it expands its product assortment, customer demographics and geographic reach. The e-grocer encourages user-generated content on its app, like recipes and videos of people cooking, to engage and educate customers. Last summer, Weee started allowing order sharing, letting people send each other a list of what they bought to get rewards, like Weee points and discounts. Weee told Grocery Dive in December it's looking to grow its content as it heavily relies on social commerce to develop its customer base. 

Larry Liu, CEO and founder of Weee, said in the announcement that Chu will help the company showcase "the beauty of food, culture and community" through storytelling. Chu has already played a role in developing a newly released marketing video on Weee's mission, marking his first contribution to the company, a Weee spokesperson wrote in an email.  

"Food has always played an integral role in my life and that has translated into my film career where food is a centerpiece in exploring culture," Chu said in a statement.

Chu is the latest in Weee's long list of top hires in recent years, which includes executives with former experience at places like Instacart, Netflix, Walmart and Tesla. Along with his work for Weee, Chu is attached to the upcoming film adaption of the musical "Wicked" and serves as an executive producer and director of "Home Before Dark" for Apple TV+.