[Distribution Hot People] "Bakehouse405, We Wanted to Compete with Bread"

Interview with Kim Jun-hwi, MD of CU Snack Food Team

9 Products Released... 1 Million Sold in Two Months
Popular for Affordable Price and Non-Dry Texture
"We Will Change the Perception That Convenience Store Bread Is Worse Than Stickers"

"The phrase ‘buying stickers but throwing away bread’ didn’t just sound funny. It made me think that we needed to create a product that could compete with bread itself, and that’s how ‘Bakehouse405’ started."

Kim Jun-hwi, MD of the Snack Food Team at BGF Retail, is introducing Bakery 405 products.
[Photo by BGF Retail]

The 9-year veteran food MD, who thinks about food all day long, wanted to shatter the prejudice that ‘convenience store bread is all the same.’ In an era when a Soboro bread costs 3,000 won, the determination to make tasty and affordable convenience store bread was embodied in Bakehouse405. Perhaps thanks to relentless effort, Bakehouse405’s nine varieties sold over one million units within two months of launch.

Kim Jun-hwi, MD of BGF Retail’s Snack Food Team, recalled in an interview with Asia Economy on the 27th, "I have created many products before, but I had never done so many tests like this."

Bakehouse405 is CU’s first private brand (PB) in the bakery sector introduced in two years. In 2021, CU launched ‘Baguette de France’ with a premium bakery concept, offering bread like sliced bread, croissants, and campagne, but it did not receive as good a response as expected.

This time, they started with an easy name. They gave Bakehouse405 symbolic meaning by taking the address of BGF headquarters located at 405 Teheran-ro. They also added new toppings to the products and made efforts to provide tactile and visual enjoyment.

Kim MD said, "For the ‘Soft Rolling’ product, to achieve moistness, I touched and tasted all the moist breads from bakeries in Seoul," adding, "I wanted to prevent people from saying that convenience store bread makes your throat dry. I even kept an eye on YouTube to understand which products customers responded to."

The affordable price is also a key reason why Bakehouse405 gained popularity. The current bread price is 1,800 won, about one-third cheaper compared to bread sold at regular bakeries. Using the discount event held from 7 to 9 a.m., the price drops to 1,260 won. Although they set a lower profit margin than other PB products, they ran around everywhere to source good ingredients cheaply. Kim MD found high-quality bread sheets overseas and significantly reduced costs by directly importing them.

The goal of Bakehouse405 is to create consumers who visit CU specifically to buy bread. Kim MD expressed his ambition, saying, "We want to grow into a ‘steady seller’ loved by consumers for a long time," and "We hope to expand the brand overseas, including Southeast Asia and Central Asia, based on our domestic foundation."