Wondayta Launches Korea's First Chef IP Platform 'Fiveit'
Famous Chefs' Online Classes Open
Over 1,100 Offline Students Trained
CEO Yang Jong-woon: "Solving Information Asymmetry"
Chef Lee Seon-jae is giving a lecture at Five It Culinary Academy located in Magok-dong, Gangseo-gu, Seoul.
[Asia Economy Reporter Donghyun Choi] "It's economical to prepare this ingredient all at once and store it for two weeks." "You must never use cutter knives or staplers as they could get into customers' food." "You can eat the sandwich right after buying it, but you need to consider preparing it for refrigerated storage as well."
At the Fiveit Culinary Academy located in Magok-dong, Gangseo-gu, Seoul, a one-day cooking class was held on the 22nd. Chef Lee Seonjae (representative partner of the Culinary Academy) gave an enthusiastic lecture while grilling chicken breast in front of six trainees. He did not pause for more than three seconds, seemingly eager to share as much as possible his own cooking methods and ingredient utilization know-how acquired from top hotels in the U.S., Singapore, and Korea.
All the trainees gathered at the academy that day were self-employed operators of stores or workshops. Mr. Kim, in his 50s, who runs a baking workshop in Banpo-dong, said, "These days, many cafes are trying new things by combining cooking with bread, not just baking," adding, "Learning cooking here helps me teach prospective entrepreneurs who come to our workshop, which is very helpful." There are also increasing cases of business success by launching menus learned at this academy in their own stores.
Korea's First Chef IP Platform Fiveit
Chef Lee Seon-jae (Representative Partner of Culinary Academy) is explaining the course curriculum of Five Eat Culinary Academy.
The academy is operated by Fiveit, a chef intellectual property (IP) platform serviced by OneData, an IT system development company. Fiveit currently collaborates with famous domestic chefs to provide cooking, cafe brunch, and bakery content. Since May last year, it has been running an offline academy and recently officially opened online classes.
Students visit Fiveit for various purposes such as new menu development, experiencing expensive cooking equipment, and ingredient management consulting. So far, it has produced over 1,100 offline students. Fiveit places more emphasis on commercialization using chef content. A representative example is Geumgo Meat House operated by OneData's F&B division. Geumgo Meat House, which has opened up to its third branch in the Magok district of Gangseo-gu, is a restaurant branded in collaboration with chefs by OneData, achieving sales of over 10 billion KRW in just two and a half years. Nam Sujin, Executive Director of OneData's Platform Business Division, said, "We plan to introduce specific menus or chains like Geumgo Meat House to the market in collaboration with chefs," adding, "As more success stories accumulate, the quality of chef content will also improve."
"We Want to Solve Information Asymmetry in the Food Service Industry and Help Self-Employed"
Yang Jongun, CEO of OneData, said he established Fiveit because he wanted to solve difficulties he experienced as a self-employed person. He emphasized that Korean cooking methods are so closed-off that even daughters-in-law are not taught, and he wants to help self-employed people by resolving this information asymmetry problem.
CEO Yang said, "The hardest thing when I first started self-employment was finding recipes," adding, "I traveled all over the country asking for recipes, and many places demanded between 5 million KRW and up to 100 million KRW." He continued, "Many self-employed people suffer from franchises and pay huge costs for recipes even before starting their business," and added, "Our primary goal is to share and popularize these previously closed-off recipes by applying the operational know-how of IT companies like Yuruntech and OneData to Fiveit."
CEO Yang plans to try various initiatives through Fiveit starting next year, including opening offline popup stores by chefs.
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