Pulmuone's Ambitious 'Frozen Pizza' Sells One Million Units in Just Two Months

[Asia Economy Reporter Choi Sunghye] Pulmuone's third-generation innovative product, frozen pizza, has been heating up the market since the beginning of the year.

Pulmuone Foods announced on the 18th that its 'No Edge Crust Pizza' surpassed 1 million units sold within two months of its launch. The No Edge Crust Pizza is a new product that Pulmuone introduced to mark its entry into the domestic frozen pizza market, released in December last year.

The strong sales of the No Edge Crust Pizza are an innovative achievement considering the recent contraction of the frozen pizza market. According to Nielsen Korea, the domestic frozen pizza market, which was less than 10 billion KRW in 2015, rapidly grew to peak at 94.2 billion KRW in 2018 but decreased by about 30% compared to the previous year.

Park Seongjae, CM of the Rice & Dough division at Pulmuone Foods FRM Business Unit, said, “Frozen pizza has succeeded in attracting consumer attention due to its lower price compared to pizza specialty stores, but consumer satisfaction has recently plummeted due to hard dough and sparse toppings. Considering domestic and international trends in home meal replacements, we judged that if consumer dissatisfaction is resolved, the growth potential of the frozen pizza market is very high.”

To innovatively improve the two consumer complaints of ‘hard dough’ and ‘sparse toppings,’ Pulmuone introduced the latest pizza manufacturing technologies from global pizza leaders Italy and the United States and conducted two years of research and development. As a result, they introduced a process that allows toppings to fully cover the pizza ‘edge’ for the first time, launching three types of ‘No Edge Pizza,’ and developed a fully automated production process for the crust part, releasing two types of ‘Crust Pizza.’

The optimization for air fryer cooking is also cited as a factor in its popularity. When cooked in an air fryer, the pizza is not tough or hard, achieving an innovative ‘crispy outside, moist inside’ texture. The pizza dough was also designed to be easily divided into four pieces.

Pulmuone initially set its frozen pizza sales target at 15 billion KRW this year, but due to better-than-expected sales and positive customer feedback, it revised the target to 30 billion KRW. They also expect to easily achieve the second-largest market share.

Park CM expressed his ambition, saying, “This year, Pulmuone will lead the overall market growth, expanding the frozen pizza market to over 100 billion KRW and achieving a market share of 30%.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.