"Take Care of Your Health with Convenient Meals from Convenience Stores"… CU Launches ‘The Geongang Sikdan’ Products

CU recently announced on the 4th that it will sequentially launch eight new products in its healthy convenience food series, ‘The Geongang Sikdan (The Healthy Diet),’ starting this month, in response to the increasingly segmented consumer demand for health.

The model is looking at 'The Geongang Diet' products at CU.
[Photo by CU]

The Geongang Sikdan is a convenience food line created by CU focusing on balanced nutrition and healthy cooking methods, catering to the growing number of customers who practice daily diet management.

First introduced in November 2021, The Geongang Sikdan has received great response, selling a total of 620,000 units with 270,000 units in 2022 and 350,000 units from January to September 2023.

The newly launched The Geongang Sikdan products include two low-sodium convenience foods and six vegetarian convenience foods. Unlike the previous menu centered on high-protein and low-calorie options, this time sodium-reduced and vegetarian menus have been added to meet diverse customer needs.

The low-sodium convenience foods are ‘Tuna Salad Yubu Jumeokbap (2,200 KRW)’ and ‘Wasabi Crab Salad Gimbap (3,000 KRW).’ These products were developed with support from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety to reduce the burden of sodium intake and improve the positive image of convenience store convenience foods. The sodium content of the low-sodium jumeokbap and gimbap is 480mg and 740mg respectively, which is very low considering the World Health Organization’s recommended daily sodium intake of 2,000mg.

For vegetarian convenience foods, in celebration of World Vegetarian Day (October 1), there are gimbap, jumeokbap, dosirak (lunchbox), and sandwiches made from plant-based ingredients such as alternative meat. The plant-based katsu used in ‘Vegetarian Katsu Gimbap (2,900 KRW),’ ‘Vegetarian Katsu Burger (3,600 KRW),’ and ‘Vegetarian Katsu Jeongsik (set meal) (5,000 KRW)’ is made from ingredients extracted from soybeans and produced according to standards emphasizing plant-based raw materials during the manufacturing process.

Additionally, CU is launching ‘Vegetarian Mushroom Japchae Rice (4,300 KRW),’ which uses vegetarian soy sauce and is filled with vegetables; ‘Vegetarian Crumble Gochujang Triangle Gimbap (1,200 KRW),’ featuring vegetarian crumble in a special gochujang sauce; and ‘Vegetarian Mortadella Arugula Sandwich (4,700 KRW),’ topped with plant-based mortadella ham and arugula on grain ciabatta bread.

Hwang Ji-seon, head of the convenience food team at BGF Retail, said, “As interest in health management increases, we have added vegetarian and low-sodium product lines to The Geongang Sikdan line, which offers both convenience and health. Going forward, CU will continue to strengthen differentiated healthy convenience foods to meet the growing demand for diet management.”

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