"These Days Customers Don't Even Look at Price": Department Stores Lock In Orchards Just to Sell One Box of Fruit

Department Stores Race to Expand Designated Production Areas
Climate Risk and Gastronomy Trends Fuel Production Area Competitiveness

Department store food halls have entered a phase of "production?area competition." Holiday gift sets are evolving away from a focus on price and volume toward a differentiation strategy centered on exclusive collaborations with specific production areas. This shift reflects both greater uncertainty in agricultural supply due to climate change and a consumer trend that values gastronomy and storytelling.

According to the industry on February 7, Lotte Department Store has put the premium new grape variety "Geulloriseuta," a type of Red Shine Muscat, at the forefront of its Lunar New Year gift sets this year. Fresh produce buyers personally explored production areas and signed exclusive contracts with traditional domestic grape?growing regions that can reproduce the flavor of summer fruits even in winter.

Geulloriseuta, which ranked first at the Garak Market new grape variety evaluation in 2025, will be offered exclusively by Lotte Department Store in this gift set, using only high?sugar grapes with a Brix level of 18 or higher, carefully selected from farms in Sangju, Gyeongbuk, that have been cultivating grapes for more than 20 years.

'Geulloriseuta', the farm of Shin Heeyong, located in Pyeongsan-ri, Sangju-si, Gyeongbuk, designated as a production site by Lotte Department Store. Lotte Department Store

Market response has already been confirmed. Geulloriseuta, which was supplied in limited quantities to seven stores in the Seoul metropolitan area, including the Jamsil branch and the main store, last fall, sold out early in full. Grapes in the Red Shine Muscat family, with their red color and refreshing sweetness, are estimated to have firmly established themselves as the "mainstream" of the grape market, with sales growing by more than 60% in the fall of last year alone.

Lotte Department Store is expanding its designated production?area strategy to major holiday fruits overall. Focusing on apples and pears, it has exclusively sourced top?grade domestic fresh produce since 2024 by designating about five production areas, including Muju, Cheongsong, Geochang, and Naju. In response to climate change, it then diversified its production areas and discovered new and unique farms, more than doubling the number of designated production areas to around ten as of 2026, including Yanggu, Jeongseon, and Cheonan.

Competitors are also moving quickly. Ahead of this year's Lunar New Year, Shinsegae Department Store introduced a mango gift set in collaboration with the Chachoengsao production area in central Thailand. Going beyond simple importation, this is a joint production?area project in which Shinsegae applies its own quality standards to every stage, from cultivation and harvest to ripening, sorting, and logistics. Through its designated production?area project known as "Select Farm," Shinsegae Department Store collaborates with renowned domestic and overseas production areas and jointly designs everything from variety selection and cultivation methods to harvest timing.

Mango gift set introduced by Shinsegae Department Store in collaboration with the Chachoengsao region in central Thailand. Shinsegae

For this year's Lunar New Year, Hyundai Department Store expanded the designated production?area strategy into the realm of "value consumption" by introducing eco?friendly Korean beef gift sets produced through organic livestock farming, free?range ecological livestock farming, animal?welfare practices, and low?carbon methods. Buyers traveled across the country to select more than 50 free?range ecological livestock farms, and chose to collaborate only with farms whose rearing environments and operating methods they had personally checked and verified. This year, Hyundai further strengthened its differentiation by newly adding Seongisidol Ranch in Jeju, which has been raising Korean beef organically for more than 70 years, as a production area.

In a situation where climate change is increasing volatility in agricultural production, designated production areas that can simultaneously ensure stable supply and quality control are emerging both as a risk?management tool and as a differentiation asset. Growing interest in the stories behind production areas and in production methods is reinforcing this trend. An industry insider said, "In the past, holiday gifts were mostly chosen by price range, but these days, the name of the production area itself has become one of the selection criteria," adding, "Depending on how you design the production area, consumer perception of the product can change dramatically."