Still Only Buying Cigarettes? I Go to Convenience Stores Instead of Laundromats, Banks, or PC Bangs

The Number of Convenience Stores Exceeds 40,000, Establishing Themselves as a Lifestyle Platform
New Coined Term 'Pensegwon' Emerges, Serving as Restaurants, Banks, Security Offices, and Laundries

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Hye-seon] Convenience stores are establishing themselves as 'lifestyle platforms.' They have evolved from simple neighborhood retail shops selling items like cigarettes to providing life-close services such as parcel delivery, food delivery, financial services, insurance, and laundry services.

Convenience stores (Seven Eleven) first opened in May 1989 at the Seoul Olympic Athletes' Village shopping center. At a time when supermarkets were the norm, the emergence of convenience stores operating 24 hours a day attracted attention as a new distribution format. In 1990, CU, Ministop, and GS25 entered the convenience store market, and by 2007, the number of stores nationwide exceeded 10,000. This year, as convenience stores turn 32 years old, the number of stores has surpassed 40,000. With the increase in single-person households, the new term 'Pensegwon (Convenience Store + Station Area)' has emerged, showing how deeply convenience stores have embedded themselves in daily life. Convenience stores serve as places for solo dining and drinking, as well as functioning as banks, security offices, and laundromats.

Convenience Stores Deliver to Your Doorstep

The convenience store delivery service was first launched by CU in 2010 within the industry. At that time, before smartphones existed, orders were placed by phone, and the store staff personally delivered the items. Since dedicated delivery personnel were required, the service was operated at a test level in about 10 directly managed stores with many employees. Later, in 2015, CU developed a location-based and real-time inventory-linked O2O system optimized for a single-person work system, establishing a convenience store delivery system. Based on this, last year, CU partnered with the delivery platform Yogiyo for a joint business, expanding delivery nationwide. CU's delivery service operates in over 5,000 stores nationwide, the largest in the industry. The results have been positive. CU's delivery service sales have increased by an average of 25% per quarter. High-demand delivery locations include university areas, one-room apartments, and office districts. Some stores have recorded daily sales of up to 3 million KRW from delivery services alone.

Since March, CU has also introduced the industry's first delivery service through Naver Easy Order. By searching for CU on Naver, customers can order about 360 products from stores within a 1.5 km radius.

Send Parcels from Home and Receive Them at Convenience Stores

CU's Home Parcel Service is a premium service where, unlike the traditional method requiring customers to visit the convenience store to drop off parcels, a delivery driver visits the customer's specified time and place to pick up items and then handles parcel registration at a nearby CU store. Unlike existing visit parcel services, customers can also set how to hand over items to the delivery driver. For example, if set to leave items at the front door or apartment security office, the driver can collect the items from those locations even if the customer is absent, handling parcel registration on their behalf. This year, CU launched the 'CU Kkiri' parcel service, which uses CU's own logistics network to allow ultra-low-cost parcel exchanges between stores for 1,000 to 2,000 KRW. The CU Kkiri parcel service combines existing convenience store parcel and pickup services, allowing customers to pick up parcels registered at one CU store directly at another designated CU store. CU Kkiri handles only small parcels under 5 kg, with the lowest domestic rates of 1,600 KRW for parcels under 1 kg and 2,400 KRW for parcels between 1 kg and 5 kg. Currently, CU is partnered with about 20 online shopping malls, including 11st, Interpark, Yes24, Kyobo Bookstore, Etude House, and TMON.

GS25's parcel service is available at GS25, GS Super, and LALABLU (H&B store) nationwide (excluding some stores), and the service scope is gradually expanding to include pickup services. GS25 has also been operating the unmanned parcel locker service 'Smile Box' since September 2016 in partnership with eBay Korea. The 'Smile Box Service' allows customers to designate a GS25 store equipped with Smile Box lockers as the delivery destination when ordering products from Gmarket, Auction, or G9. Parcels are delivered to the designated Smile Box, and customers can conveniently pick them up anytime. There are about 500 Smile Box locations in the metropolitan area, enabling customers to receive products purchased from Gmarket, Auction, and others through Smile Box.

Fast Charging for Electric Vehicles Also Available

GS Retail is building electric vehicle (EV) fast charging facilities to serve as a future automotive energy distribution platform. Unlike some EV chargers that only support specific car brands, the EV charging facilities operated at GS25 and GS Supermarket support charging for all types of electric vehicles. The usage fee is 174 KRW per kW, and customers can fully charge an EV with a total capacity of about 30 kW at GS Retail stores' fast chargers in approximately 30 minutes. Since charging speed is crucial, over 90% of the chargers operated by GS Retail are high-speed chargers.

Drop Off Laundry and Get It Delivered

GS25's laundry reception service is designed for customers who have difficulty accessing laundromats or cannot drop off laundry during laundromat operating hours. GS25, which operates 24 hours and is close to customers, acts as a hub connecting customers with local laundromats by providing laundry reception services. Customers can access the Rewhite mobile application (app) and select convenience store visit reception to find the nearest GS25. Customers can visit the nearest GS25 and simply present the membership barcode issued by the Rewhite app along with their laundry to easily register their laundry.

CU also offers laundry services. Customers wishing to register laundry can make a pickup reservation on the Audrey Laundry mobile webpage (no separate app download required) and then use the CU Post, a parcel reception device inside CU stores, to register. The service uses convenience store parcel delivery for pickup and delivery. Registration is available year-round, anytime. Laundry registered before 5 p.m. is collected the same day, immediately processed by laundry experts at Audrey Laundry, neatly packaged, and delivered to the designated address within 1-2 days. Laundry items include tops, bottoms, outerwear, bedding, and shoes. Prices are approximately 2,000 KRW for shirts, 4,000 KRW for knits, 3,500 KRW for pants, 6,000 KRW for jumpers, and 5,500 KRW for sneakers, with no fees for pickup or delivery.

Banking and Insurance Services Also Available

The 'CU Non-Account Transfer Service' allows sending cash to another person's account without requiring a public certificate, a bank account in the sender's name, or complicated authentication procedures. To use, customers install the Send application on their smartphones, register as members, enter the recipient's account, and present the generated transfer barcode to the store clerk, handing over the desired cash amount. This service is a cash deposit transfer, not an account-to-account transfer, so foreigners and teenagers without bank accounts in their names can also use it. Additionally, the fee is 900 to 1,300 KRW per transaction (based on VAN-operated ATMs), about 45% cheaper than ATM transfer fees.

The 'CU POS Cash Withdrawal Service' allows customers to withdraw cash by paying the withdrawal amount together with their purchase using a card. It is available with cards issued by 16 major banks partnered with the Korea Financial Telecommunications & Clearings Institute. As the number of ATMs operated by banks decreases, this service offers convenient cash withdrawal at convenience stores. The POS cash withdrawal fee (800 KRW) is about 500 KRW cheaper than the general ATM fee (1,300 KRW).

Seven Eleven operates over 6,000 financial automation devices nationwide, collaborating with various financial institutions to provide financial services. Among these, the number of ATMs is the largest in the industry, totaling about 4,000 units.

Insurance subscriptions are also possible at convenience stores. CU and GS25 sell pet insurance non-face-to-face. CU partners with Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance, and GS25 with Hyundai Marine & Fire Insurance.

Seven Eleven also offers overseas document delivery services. After registering shipments on the FedEx website, customers visit Seven Eleven with the reservation number sent to their mobile phone and the documents to be sent, and simply register the shipment.

Also Replaces PC Rooms

CU's unmanned multifunction device service offers copying, printing, faxing, scanning, and the ability to download and print or send electronic documents such as resident registration certificates and language test scores directly from websites or cloud services using PCs linked to the multifunction devices. This service is available at 500 stores. CU first introduced the unmanned multifunction device service in 2015, operating it in about 100 stores mainly in one-room apartment areas, university districts, and residential neighborhoods. It adds public office functions to local neighborhoods, enabling simple document tasks outside offices or campuses based on convenience store infrastructure.

Discounted Sales of Closing Items at Convenience Stores

Seven Eleven's representative service product is the 'Last Order' discounted sales service. Currently, about 330 products with relatively short shelf lives, such as lunch boxes, triangular kimbap, kimbap, and beverages, are included. Seven Eleven stated that through the Last Order service, consumers can purchase needed products at reasonable prices, franchise owners nationwide reduce waste disposal burdens, and it also helps improve profits by attracting new customers.

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