Food makers and retailers are racing to keep up as viral flavors like Dubai chocolate and ube burn out in months, raising costs and boosting convenience store sales.
A woman poses with six new products made with ube, a purple yam variety, that convenience store chain CU unveiled on April 27.CU
Jang, a 33-year-old who works at a small food company, says he can barely keep up with trends that seem to change overnight.
"Not long ago, Dubai chocolate was popular, so we made a prototype — and the trend died right after," he told the JoongAng Ilbo on July 28. "I've lost count of how many trends have come and gone just in the first half of this year — Dubai chocolate, golden cheese, ube.
"When a trend fades and leftover ingredients pile up, the cost burden is heavy, so it's hard for small companies to keep chasing them. Even big companies basically launch a product first and then tweak it little by little afterward."
Korea's food and retail industries are scrambling to keep up with dessert trend cycles that keep getting shorter. Dubai chocolate, which was dominant as recently as early this year, lost steam in under three months, and its spot was taken over by ube, a purple yam variety native to the Philippines.
Riding the ube craze, food companies have been rushing to wrap products in purple packaging. Lotte Wellfood launched ube versions of Crunky chocolate bars, the chocolate-covered mochi cookie-like Chaltteok Pie and Natuur ice cream this month. Steady sellers like Haitai's chocolate-covered sponge cake bites Oh Yes and Crown Confectionery's Couque D'Asse cookie sandwich with chocolate filling have also come out with new ube-flavored editions. Dairy companies including Maeil and Yonsei Dairy have rolled out their own versions of the "ube latte."
As trend cycles shorten, retailers have also gained more leverage over food companies. Getting products onto a retailer's trend-themed display even a day earlier can make a real difference in sales during a product's brief window of popularity. "When a major supermarket chain says, 'We're doing ube this time, so get your product out now,' we have no choice but to move on their schedule," a food industry insider said.
Ube, a purple yam varietyJOONGANG ILBO
As a result, some retailers end up with exclusive rights to certain products. Orion's cheddar cheese flavored cookies, for instance, were sold exclusively through Shinsegae-affiliated channels such as E-mart and SSG.com.
Convenience stores, which both make their own products and control their own sales channels, are the biggest winners in this kind of short-lived, trend-driven business. Every time a new trend emerges, Korea's three major convenience store chains flood the market with countless variations across pasteries, snacks and ice cream. CU has released 26 Dubai chocolate items, 10 ube items and 19 gold cheese items; GS25 has rolled out 18 Dubai chocolate, five ube and nine gold cheese products; and 7-Eleven currently sells five Dubai chocolate, 10 ube and two gold cheese items.
That strategy is translating directly into results. At GS25, sales of trend-driven products grew 11.2 percent in July alone compared with the same month a year earlier. At 7-Eleven, dessert product sales grew 54 percent between January and July compared with a year earlier, while at CU, sales grew 64.4 percent between January and June compared with the same period last year. CU's Dubai chocolate-related products have sold more than 15 million units cumulatively, and its ube products have topped 700,000 units.
"Even knockoff-style products can drive huge sales, so we can never afford to fall behind on a trend," a convenience store industry representative said.
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
