Hawaiian Plate Lunch too Lunch Boxes Sales Booming

Nothing is more American that the plate lunch from Aloha Hawaiian Grill. Mix and Match meal bundling is the mainstay of the Grocerant niche and plate lunches can be found everywhere in Hawaii and increasingly around the other 49 states. Convenience stores in South Korean have found a way to drive sales and profits while improving speed of service with fresh prepared lunch box meals.

In fact “Sales of the mass-produced lunch boxes at convenience stores surged a whopping 65 percent during the first half of this year, compared with the same period last year, according to the country’s biggest convenience store chain CU. Sales of lunch boxes at local convenience stores such as CU, GS25 and 7-Eleven increased an average of over 50 percent this year from a year earlier, according to the companies.”

In South Korea over 26 percent of the country’s population lives in one-person households, and the proportion is expected to grow to 34.3 percent by 2035, according to government data. Single-person households, which are becoming a dominant demographic feature of Korean society, are one of the main forces behind the explosive market expansion. Sounds a lot like the US where 50% of Americans over the age of 18 are single. 

Back in the day packed lunch boxes at convenience stores in Korea used to be disregarded as low-quality meals, but now retailers are offering diverse and healthy options at affordable prices, drawing keen attention from customers that like in the US are deemed by consumers ‘restaurant’ quality.

Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant Guru® stated the grocerant niche filled with Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared food is driving customer migration around the globe.  Sales drive success and 7-Eleven Korea sells 41,000 boxed meals per day, focused on providing quality rice, as Korea’s staple food makes up the largest part of each lunch box. “Customers in their 20s and 30s showed high satisfaction over the cheap price of lunch boxes, but we found that they look for products that give feelings of home-made meals,” said Cho Sung-wook, product development director at BGF Retail, CU’s Korea’s largest C-store operator.

This past spring, CU introduced the “Double Big Table,” where the side dishes change three times a week. A lunch box meal that has nine different side dishes in one product became the best-selling lunch box over competitors. The Korean lunch box market is valued at around 2.5 trillion won (US$2.22 billion), including lunch box specialty stores. So, Grocerant sales are booming around the globe are yours? 

www.FoodserviceSolutions.us  specializes in outsourced business development. We can help you identify, quantify and qualify additional food retail segment opportunities or a brand leveraging integration strategy.  Foodservice Solutions® of Tacoma WA is the global leader in the Grocerant niche visit, Linkedin.com/in/grocerant or twitter.com/grocerant Contact Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us