[Start人] 'Meonki' Greatly Reduces Inconvenience for Restaurant Owners and Customers... Unshaken Even by COVID-19

Pre-order and Payment via Monkey Exclusive App
"Customers Focus on Dining, Business Owners on Cooking"
Advancing the Dining Ecosystem through Digital Innovation
Prime Location in Top-tier Commercial Area with Automated System

Monkey Bundang Humax Branch

# Humax Building, Sunae-dong, Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi Province. As lunchtime arrived, Humax employees and citizens headed to the shared kitchen "Monki" located on the basement first floor. With about ten popular restaurant outlets lined up, it looked no different from any other food court, but it stood out due to the application of advanced IT technology.

Few people ordered through the kiosk installed at the entrance. Most placed orders and payments via the Monki exclusive application (app) and visited just in time for their food to be ready. There was no need to stand in long lines or take out wallets to pay. With ample seating available, it was rare to see people wandering around holding their food.

Kim Hyuk-gyun, CEO of Monthly Kitchen (pictured), said in an interview with Asia Economy on the 14th, "Monki is not just a shared kitchen in the form of simple real estate leasing but is leading the market as a digital gourmet edit shop," adding, "It is a process of innovating analog dining into digital." Established in 2018, Monki operates a total of seven branches in the Seoul metropolitan area. Last year, when the dining industry faced difficulties due to COVID-19, six branches were opened.

Monki is an O2O platform linking online and offline. CEO Kim’s philosophy is simple: "Customers focus on dining, and store owners focus on cooking." Monki app users can check the estimated waiting time before ordering and use categories such as most ordered, popular new items, and menus under 10,000 won. Takeout and delivery orders are also available.

Store owners receive one-stop services related to store management through the Monki Owner app, including sales status analysis, ingredient ordering, customer management, and demand forecasting. The AI demand forecasting system analyzes weather, day of the week, and local events to help order the appropriate amount of ingredients.

Kim Hyuk-gyun, CEO of Monthly Kitchen

CEO Kim explained, "All Monki branches have large halls with over 100 seats and are located in prime commercial areas combining subway access, residential, and office zones." He added, "Tenant operators can generate five streams of revenue: hall sales, delivery, takeout, corporate and group lunches, and meal subscriptions." In practice, delivery sales increase when social distancing is tightened, and hall sales rise when restrictions ease, complementing each other.

Kim said, "The most important factors in the dining industry recently are automation, robotics, and unmanned operations," revealing, "We have established an automated dishwashing system and eliminated the burden of hall serving staff." He added, "Owners only need to focus on how to make tastier food." In May this year, there are plans to support tenant operators in making optimal choices by comparing prices and quality at ingredient stores.

Monthly Kitchen completed a Series B investment round worth 23 billion won last December, raising a total of 31.3 billion won in investments. This year, it plans to operate about 400 restaurants across 20 integrated branches and expand Monki services to road shop stores. The transaction volume target is set at 100 billion won.

CEO Kim stated, "Business is not simply about making money but providing value that solves society’s pain points," and added, "We will create a dining ecosystem where anyone with sincerity can feel economic responsibility as a parent or spouse and pride in their work."

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