Jonggak Station at lunch time. When you go down the stairs, a slightly different scene unfolds instead of the familiar restaurant. Rather than a buffet where you stand in a line, you have to go around each country and choose food. It is not a time to eat a meal, but a movement that moves like a short trip.
The domestic restaurant market has already surpassed ‘scale competition’.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs and the Korea Agro-Fisheries and Food Trade Corporation on the 2nd, the scale of the restaurant industry has grown to about 200 trillion won.
Now the market is asking: It’s not about how cheap it is, but how different the experience it provides. In the midst of this change, Our Home launched a new experiment.
‘Take No. 1 Store’, which opened on May 1, is located on the second basement level of Youngpoong Building in Jongno-gu, Seoul. Exclusive area of approximately 823㎡ (250 pyeong). It is connected to Jonggak Station on Line 1.
It is a commercial district with a constant floating population. According to the Seoul Tourism Foundation, the Jongno and Gwanghwamun areas are representative commercial districts with both office workers and tourist demand, and have a structure that maintains both weekday and weekend flows.
This is why the industry is paying attention to this store. This is because it is not simply the first store, but a ‘test store’ that can quickly verify success.
Another axis of the take is the ‘pop-up table’. It is a content-type space that applies a new theme every month. The first collaboration is Samyang Food’s ‘Fildak’. Related menus will operate until August. In the future, we plan to expand to collaborations with star chefs, well-established brands, and convenience foods.
The strategy is to view the dining space as a constantly changing content platform rather than a ‘fixed menu’.
This attempt is not just a matter of one store. Our Home has been a B2B company focused on group meals and food ingredients. But the market structure is already changing.
Due to the low birth rate, demand for meals is decreasing, and eating out is being reorganized to focus on ‘experience consumption’. Our Home sees this as an opportunity.
In fact, the home convenience food brand ‘On the Go’ has risen to about 20% of the frozen lunch box market share. Take is the next step. This is a structural change in which food service companies come directly into contact with consumers.
The restaurant market is clearly changing direction now. Competitiveness lies in the variety of experiences provided, not the quantity relative to price.
A survey by the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry also found that the importance of ‘experience factors’ in the criteria for choosing a restaurant to eat out has grown rapidly.
An industry official said, “The restaurant market is quickly moving away from simple menu competition and toward selling space and experience,” and added, “A structure that allows content to continuously change like takeoff is likely to become one of the standard models in the restaurant industry in the future.”
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