MyChef, 106-Fold Growth in 10 Years Since Establishment

[Asia Economy Reporter Seungjin Lee] MyChef announced on the 25th that the company has grown 106 times since its founding.

Established in June 2011, MyChef is the first company in Korea to start the meal kit business, growing approximately 106 times in 10 years from 260 million KRW in sales in its first year to 27.6 billion KRW last year. MyChef, which has recorded growth every year, showed even greater growth last year as ready meals gained attention due to COVID-19.

Since its incorporation in 2016, more than 5 million consumers have visited the MyChef website to date. This means about 85,000 customers visit steadily every month. In the past year, more than 150,000 people have visited monthly. Additionally, a 2020 survey of MyChef’s own mall members showed a repurchase rate of 90% among consumers who tried MyChef products once, confirming high product satisfaction and customer loyalty. In fact, one consumer ordered a total of 506 products over one year.

MyChef has focused on research and expanding its lineup and menus for meal kits, including establishing the Meal Kit Science Research Institute. Based on this, it currently sells about 180 types of meal kit menus and holds over 500 recipes.

Meanwhile, in June, the month with the highest performance in the first half of this year, a product launched in collaboration with YouTuber Heo Chaming went viral mainly among the 10-20s generation, increasing sales by about 150% compared to the same month last year, and new subscriber growth rate increased 3.7 times. The customer base, which was mainly concentrated in the 30-40s generation, greatly expanded to include the 20-45s generation during the collaboration.

To accelerate growth, MyChef plans to expand sales channels and increase production capacity in the second half of this year. So far, it has expanded sales channels to include its official mall as well as major offline department stores such as Lotte, Shinsegae, and Hyundai, and online platforms such as Coupang and Market Kurly. In May, it entered 86 Lotte Mart stores nationwide, holding a total of about 60 sales channels. This is an 8.5-fold growth in a short period compared to the 7 sales channels it had in July 2017.

By the end of this year, MyChef plans to complete an ‘optimized advanced meal kit factory’ designed based on 10 years of business know-how. The factory, being established on a 1,000-pyeong site in the Seongnam area, is designed with a production capacity of 100,000 units per day (up to 160,000 units), and is expected to achieve groundbreaking results for popularizing meal kits by extending product shelf life by at least 3 to 4 days through advanced equipment, improved work methods, and state-of-the-art cooling systems.

Lim Jong-eok, CEO of MyChef, said, “Over the past 10 years, MyChef has started the meal kit industry in Korea, which was a barren land for meal kits, and has worked hard to establish its current position through many trials and errors.” He added, “Going forward, we will create a ‘meal kit lifestyle culture’ where meal kits are naturally chosen as meal menus.”

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