Lotte Mart Launches Differentiated Ready-to-Cook Food Store... Introducing 'Charida, Siktak'

The 'Charida, Siktak' store at Lotte Mart Jamsil branch. (Photo by Lotte Mart)

[Asia Economy Reporter Seungjin Lee] Lotte Mart is launching a ready-to-eat food store focused on seasonal ingredients and health.

On the 12th, Lotte Mart announced that through its ready-to-eat food store brand, ‘Charida, Siktak,’ it will offer products based on taste, health, and trust using seasonal dishes. ‘Charida, Siktak’ is a brand of ready-to-eat food stores operated by Lotte Mart, with the core keywords being 'Fun-Meal,' derived from the English initials of 'family and freshness,' 'specialness,' and 'newtro.' The goal is to differentiate raw materials and develop seasonal products to deliver healthiness to customers.

Lotte Mart first introduced the revamped ‘Charida, Siktak’ at its Jamsil branch on the 5th. The focus was on ‘seasonal raw materials’ and ‘health,’ with the most significant changes made in the health food categories such as salads, porridge, and soups. In recent years, the health food market has been continuously growing due to increased health awareness. Looking at sales of porridge and soup in Lotte Mart’s processed foods, there were high growth rates of 17.4% and 89.7% in 2018 and 2019, respectively.

Accordingly, the proportion of health foods at Lotte Mart Jamsil’s ‘Charida, Siktak’ was significantly increased to 27%, compared to the 9% health food ratio in general ready-to-eat food stores. The plan is to divide the year into six periods and propose health foods using representative domestic seasonal ingredients for each period.

The Korean salad ‘Octopus Ponzu Salad’ introduced this time was developed over three months by chefs and product planners at the newly established Food Innovation Center in March to combine seasonal raw materials with the most suitable sauce. To utilize yuzu, which is in season in November, they visited Goheung, the main production area of yuzu, several times and developed the product inspired by locals dipping octopus in yuzu chili pepper sauce.

Other products include salads based on Korean recipes such as ‘Mung Bean Jelly Salad’ combining mung beans and shrimp, and ‘Mushroom Salad’ using lotus root, potato, carrot, and mushrooms, as well as porridges like ‘Octopus Kimchi Porridge’ and ‘Nurungji Samgye Porridge,’ and soups such as ‘Carrot Pumpkin Soup,’ optimized with a blend of pumpkin and carrot.

Lotte Mart plans to additionally launch ‘Charida, Siktak’ at Junggye, Gwanggyo, and World Tower branches within November and expand it to all stores by 2021, aiming to grow it as Lotte Mart’s representative ready-to-eat food brand.

Meanwhile, in March, Lotte Mart declared a ‘Meal Innovation’ to strengthen the development of home meal replacements and ready-to-eat foods, establishing the ‘Food Innovation Center (FIC)’ composed of professional chefs, food researchers, and brand managers, with the core value of ‘complete replacement of home-cooked meals’ to make it easy to enjoy restaurant menus at home.

Ryu Kyung-woo, head of Lotte Mart’s Meal Innovation Division, said, “Through ‘Charida, Siktak,’ we are now able to offer products using seasonal raw materials in large mart cooking corners,” adding, “We hope this will propose healthy food options and serve as a step closer to the goal of ‘complete replacement of home-cooked meals.’”

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