[Convenience Store Empire] Store Owners Also MZ Generation... The Younger Convenience Store

⑧Increasing Number of Young Convenience Store Owners

GS25, 39.3% of Owners Are Aged 20-30
Trend-Sensitive, Actively Introduce New Products
Excellent at Using SNS for Information Gathering and Promotion

"I currently operate one convenience store, but my goal is to expand to two or three stores in the future."

Kwon Woong-hee (27), born in 1995, runs the GS25 Gwangju Sansurotop branch in Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province. When he was working as a store manager at the branch, the previous franchise owner encouraged him to take over, and he decided to start his own business because he was confident he could manage it well. Kwon’s workday begins every day at 6 a.m. He arrives early in the morning to the store to personally organize products and displays, attend to customers, and then hands over to the afternoon shift. He explained, "The more diligently I manage the store, the more I can immediately feel the results, such as increased sales, which is very appealing."

Recently, the number of franchise owners in their 20s and 30s has been increasing in convenience stores. This is the result of actively entering entrepreneurship amid the convenience store market growing so much after the COVID-19 pandemic that it surpassed large supermarket sales, and the worsening employment difficulties.

According to GS25 on the 31st, the proportion of franchise owners in their 20s and 30s among new franchisees has been rising every year: 34% in 2019, 40.4% in 2020, 40.6% in 2021, and 41.9% in 2022. During the same period, CU recorded 23.4% in 2019, 23.3% in 2020, 29.4% in 2021, and 32.8% in 2022.

As the number of MZ generation (Millennials + Generation Z) franchise owners rapidly increases, the proportion of those in their 20s and 30s is approaching 40% of the total. At GS25, the share of owners in their 20s rose from 11.6% in 2019 to 14.2% last year, and those in their 30s increased from 19.6% to 25.1%. Conversely, the 40s age group declined from 32.2% to 31%, the 50s from 24.5% to 22.2%, and the 60s from 11.4% to 7%. At Seven Eleven, the proportion of franchise owners in their 20s and 30s steadily rose from 37.1% in 2019 to 37.9% in 2020, 38.5% in 2021, and 39.4% in 2022.

Now, convenience stores have transformed not only their main customer base but also their franchise owners into the MZ generation. They leverage their youthful sensibilities to actively introduce new and trendy products, showing distinct differences from middle-aged and older franchise owners. They quickly adopt popular items known as ‘hot items’ or ‘sold-out items’ and place them in the most accessible displays for customers, boosting sales. They are making the best use of the business model where franchise owners directly order products to be handled in stores averaging 66 to 83 square meters.

A YouTube Shorts sitcom by CU featuring the story of first-year franchise owner 'Jeongju'.
[Photo by BGF Retail]

They also excel at gathering information and promoting through social networking services (SNS). They swiftly respond by monitoring the latest food trends and the movements of other brand convenience stores. Many operate Instagram accounts for each store and actively engage in online customer attraction activities beyond offline efforts. They show exceptional promotional skills by using not only promotional materials produced by the convenience store headquarters but also materials they create themselves.

The reason the 20s and 30s generation is entering convenience store entrepreneurship lies in growth potential. After the COVID-19 pandemic, the distribution paradigm shifted from offline to online, causing large supermarkets and corporate supermarkets (SSMs) to shrink, but convenience store sales continued to rise. They greatly expanded fresh food categories such as vegetables and meat, leading the trend of grocery shopping at convenience stores, and broadened their lifestyle service areas with parcel delivery and banking services, becoming an indispensable platform. As a result, in 2021, the combined sales of the three major convenience store chains (GS25, CU, Seven Eleven) surpassed those of the three major large supermarkets (E-Mart, Lotte Mart, Homeplus).

An industry insider said, "Convenience stores, which allow starting with small capital centered on the MZ generation, are widely recognized as an attractive business type for startups," adding, "Inquiries about convenience store startups from people in their 20s and 30s are continuously increasing."