GS25 Teams Up with Chef Lee Yeon-bok... Will a Generous Chinese Cuisine Lunchbox Appear?

30.1% Growth in Ready Meals from January to May YoY
Strengthening Chinese Cuisine Lineup with Chef Lee Yeon-bok Collaboration Products

GS25 announced on the 19th that it has formed a partnership with Chef Lee Yeon-bok at Yeonhui-dong Wok Studio to provide delicious meals for the entire nation.

At the event held on the 18th, Hong Seong-jun, Head of the Convenience MD Division at GS Retail, Lee Jeong-pyo, Head of the O4O Division, and Chef Lee Yeon-bok attended. Chef Lee and GS25 discussed the necessity of developing Chinese cuisine ready meals and shared ideas while tasting candidate dishes such as fried rice, palbochae, and yuringi. Although Chinese food is a popular category with high demand, there have been no hit products in convenience stores so far, so through this partnership, they agreed to develop proper Chinese ready meals.

GS25 and Chef Lee Yeon-bok signed a "Partnership for a Delicious Meal for the Entire Nation" on the 18th at Work Studio located in Yeonhui-dong.
[Photo by GS25]

By partnering with Chef Lee Yeon-bok, who holds top-level intellectual property (IP) in the Chinese cuisine field, GS25 has gained differentiated product competitiveness. Since the re-release of Kim Hye-ja lunchboxes early last year has driven the growth of ready meals with cumulative sales exceeding 30 million units, collaboration with Chef Lee, who has high public recognition and trust, is expected to play a significant role in GS25 establishing an industry-leading ready meal lineup. In fact, GS25's ready meal sales increased by 30.1% compared to the previous year through May of this year.

Chef Lee Yeon-bok said, “Since I have been collaborating with GS Shop home shopping since 2020, I thought that if I were to launch products in convenience stores, it must be GS25,” and added, “Through the Fun Restaurant program, I have already confirmed that GS25 has excellent capabilities to make the winner’s recipes easily accessible to the public, so I want to create products that truly embody Chinese cuisine expertise.”

Hong Seong-jun, Head of the Convenience MD Division at GS Retail, explained, “Following the Kim Hye-ja lunchbox, which has become a legend in convenience store Korean food, GS25 will put all efforts into revolutionary changes in convenience store Chinese food products with Chef Lee Yeon-bok.”