Injeolmi at Tim Hortons? Global chains embrace Korea's traditional flavors.

In Canada, Tim Hortons may be best known for its maple-glazed doughnuts and Timbits. On top of the signature offerings, the Canadian chain in Korea has put out something far less Canadian: an injeolmi (bean-powdered rice cake) cruller.

Dunkin' has similarly gone local, putting pumpkin-flavored injeolmi into a castella donut, while Italian coffee chain Caffe Pascucci is currently serving black sesame gelato with whole red beans.

Foreign food chains in Korea have long tweaked their menus for local tastes. But a growing number are going beyond the usual localization playbook, turning to flavors deeply rooted in the Korean pantry — from black sesame and injeolmi to red bean and rice cake. 

Tim Hortons ran what it calls its City Campaign in May, a color-themed localization built around saekdong, the striped color scheme of traditional Korean clothing, and putting its grizzly bear mascot on screen beside a Korean Asiatic black bear.

The Canadian chain reworked its signature Ice Capp cappuccino series into five shaved-ice desserts, one blending the ice with rice and topping it with red beans and rice cake, another using black sesame finished with honey yakgwa (Korean cookie). The bakery line ran injeolmi-, black sesame- and mugwort-powdered crullers, and hotteok- and injeolmi-flavored Timbits.

"Korea is one of the markets with the highest share of self-developed menu items within the global Tim Hortons network," said a company spokesperson. "The City Campaign menu we introduced in Korea has also been adopted in Singapore and Malaysia."

Cho Hye-min, who leads product planning at Tim Hortons Korea, said in June that Korean self-developed items account for about 90 percent of the around 100 menu items developed by the chain in the first half of the year.

Caffe Pascucci launched six black sesame products in late August. One is a cassata layering black sesame with injeolmi-flavored cream and chewy rice cake. Another tops honey bread with black sesame gelato and whole red bean.

“Black sesame is a signature ingredient that suits the autumn season,” a Pascucci spokesperson said. "We built drinks and desserts around its nutty, deep flavor to offer customers a new taste and experience.” The range is sold exclusively in Korea, the company said.

The timing is deliberate.

The chain launched a discount promotion in the run-up to Chuseok, the harvest holiday where people eat a variety of Korean foods, including rice cakes. “We considered demand from customers looking for gifts or products to enjoy with family ahead of the holiday,” the company said.

Dunkin' released its pumpkin injeolmi castella donut in June, and it moved fast.

"Every department collaborated closely from the planning stage, and we launched in about five weeks," a spokesperson said. "By grafting traditional ingredients Koreans like onto an existing popular product, we offered a taste that is familiar but new."

The response and sales have run above average, the company said, though it declined to give figures.

It has since gone further for the holiday, putting out a Munchkin made with hodo-gwaja (walnut cake) from Hakhwa, a 90-year-old walnut cake maker in Cheonan, alongside two pound cakes aimed at Chuseok gifting.

The pattern is not confined to coffee. Burger chains have been working the same ground, and for longer.

Shake Shack has been at it the longest, selling a gochujang (Korean chili paste) Chick'n Shack in 2020 and reviving it the next year after demand rose. It also ran a Seoul-style bulgogi burger developed with the restaurant Hanilkwan for its fifth anniversary here, and has twice sold a makgeolli (rice wine) shake.

All were limited runs, which is how nearly all of this works: a few weeks on sale, marketed on the fact that it will disappear.

Korean trade reporting says the gochujang recipe was later supplied to Shake Shack in the United States, Britain and the Philippines, where related products followed.

Others take the idea in different directions. Starbucks leans on Korean provenance rather than recipes, with a Jeju green tea matcha and a makgeolli-scented cold brew at its Gwangjang Market store. McDonald's has built burgers around produce from named counties since 2021 — Changnyeong garlic and this year Chungju waxy corn.

The commercial logic is straightforward. Korea had roughly 95,000 coffee shops as of the first quarter of last year, according to National Tax Service data, a market widely described as saturated. A chain arriving late cannot win on just espresso.

There is also a trend to ride. Korean convenience stores track what the industry calls "halmaenial," a compound of the Korean word for grandmother and the word millennial, describing younger consumers buying the snacks their grandparents ate.

CU said its halmaenial food and drink sales rose 14.1 percent year on year in the first half, and GS25 reported its comparable snack category up 22.7 percent between May and July, led by red bean, chestnut, gochujang, mugwort, yakgwa and black sesame.

All of these foreign brands are operated in Korea by Korean companies — several different ones, not one. Tim Hortons Korea is operated by BKR, which also runs Burger King here. Starbucks Korea has been majority-owned by Shinsegae's E-mart since 2021. Dunkin', Pascucci and Shake Shack all sit within SPC Group, whose holding company was reorganized as Sangmidang Holdings in January.

So this is less a case of outsiders discovering Korean flavors than of Korean operators using a foreign brand as a frame. The wrapper is imported, and the contents are not. And increasingly the contents are what is being shipped out.

BY KIM MIN-YOUNG [[email protected]]