7-Eleven Launches 'Hwanghaedo Haeju-style Bibimbap'

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Hye-seon] Seven Eleven announced on the 26th that it will launch a special planned product, ‘Hwanghaedo Haeju-style Bibimbap,’ to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the bibimbap release.

Seven Eleven’s ‘Hwanghaedo Haeju-style Bibimbap’ was developed over a total of four months in collaboration with Professor Han Young-sil’s Customized Food Research Lab at Sookmyung Women’s University, a food nutrition expert. Haeju bibimbap, a local dish of Hwanghae Province, is called ‘Haeju Gyoban’ and is characterized by using soy sauce instead of gochujang for the bibim sauce.

Seven Eleven’s ‘Hwanghaedo Haeju-style Bibimbap’ richly contains seven ingredients including soy sauce seasoning, shredded chicken breast, bracken, water parsley, shiitake mushrooms, bean sprouts, tofu, and chili peppers, embodying the unique taste and form of Haeju-style bibimbap.

Additionally, sesame oil and seaweed flakes are separately included for accompaniment, and notably, a food encyclopedia card introducing ‘Hwanghaedo Haeju-style Bibimbap’ is included, allowing customers to learn about the origin and interesting stories of bibimbap.

Seven Eleven expects a quick market settlement as consumer satisfaction with bibimbap is fundamentally high, and especially since ‘Hwanghaedo Haeju-style Bibimbap’ is a unique product with a new concept.

In fact, convenience store bibimbap lunch boxes have maintained their reputation as steady products for a long time. The bibimbap menu first appeared in domestic convenience stores 20 years ago when Seven Eleven launched ‘Summer Vegetable Bibimbap’ in 2000.

Since then, Seven Eleven has consistently introduced a total of 37 bibimbap menus (including renewals) over 20 years, with cumulative sales reaching 11 million units, which lined up would stretch about 2,000 km, equivalent to traveling back and forth between Seoul and Busan 2.5 times.

Last year, Seven Eleven’s bibimbap lunch box sales increased by 30.0% compared to the previous year, showing double-digit growth annually. This year, from January to April, amid social distancing and reluctance to go out, sales surged by an impressive 67.5% compared to the previous year, establishing bibimbap as a beloved menu among homebodies and solo diners.

The popularity of convenience store bibimbap is analyzed to be due to it being a traditional dish with broad appeal across generations, and above all, its advantage lies in offering a generous, simple, and neat meal.

Kim Ha-young, Seven Eleven’s lunch box MD, said, “Over the past 20 years, various combinations of convenience store bibimbap menus have been released, and it has now become a representative product for solo diners. Hwanghaedo Haeju-style Bibimbap, reflecting the recipe developed by Professor Han Young-sil’s team, is a differentiated product with excellent taste centered on soy sauce and chicken, so we expect it to receive a good response from customers.”

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