Pulmuone Surpasses 20% Market Share in Frozen Pizza... Climbs to 2nd Place

[Asia Economy Reporter Choi Saeng-hye] Pulmuone Foods announced on the 5th that it ranked second in the domestic frozen pizza market in the first quarter with a market share of 20.7% (based on Nielsen Korea).

Having officially entered the domestic frozen pizza market in December last year by launching the ‘No Edge·Crust Pizza,’ Pulmuone has injected new vitality by selling 1 million units within two months of launch. In particular, the domestic frozen pizza market, which had been on a downward trend since the first quarter of 2018, has reached a turning point since the fourth quarter of last year when Pulmuone entered, and is now showing a steep upward curve again.

The size of the domestic frozen pizza market shrank from 26.1 billion KRW in the first quarter of 2018, declining for six consecutive quarters, and dropped about 60% to 16.4 billion KRW in the third quarter of 2019. However, since Pulmuone launched the No Edge·Crust Pizza in the fourth quarter of 2019, the market has shifted to growth, recording 24.8 billion KRW in the first quarter of this year, a 51% increase in just two quarters.

Pulmuone interprets this as a result of the chronic problems of frozen pizzas?‘hard dough’ and ‘poor toppings’?not being resolved, which led to a sharp decline in consumer satisfaction. To innovatively improve these two consumer complaints, Pulmuone introduced the latest pizza manufacturing technologies from global pizza-leading countries Italy and the United States and conducted research and development for two years. As a result, they introduced a process that allows toppings to fully cover the pizza ‘edge’ for the first time, launching three types of ‘No Edge Pizza,’ and released two types of ‘Crust Pizza’ produced through a fully automated process that covers the crust area.

The No Edge and Crust Pizzas surpassed cumulative sales of 1 million units within two months of launch. Pulmuone initially set its frozen pizza sales target at 15 billion KRW this year, but due to better-than-expected sales and positive customer feedback, it revised the target sales amount to 30 billion KRW.