Riding the "Dujjonku Craze": 10 Million Units Sold and Record Earnings Put This Company in the Spotlight on Wall Street [Weekend Money]

BGF Retail Recovers Product Competitiveness with Dubai Series
Q4 2025 Operating Profit Jumps 24% to 64.2 Billion Won
CU "Dubai Dessert" Sales Top 10 Million Units

The recent craze for "Dubai Chewy Cookie (Dujjonku)" among Millennials & Gen Z is now impacting corporate earnings and even the stock market. Securities firms have evaluated that BGF Retail has recovered its product competitiveness, powered by the launch and popularity of the "Dubai Dessert Series." BGF Retail’s performance has also hit an all-time high.

Yoo Junghyun, a researcher at Daishin Securities, raised the target price for BGF Retail by 13% to 170,000 won, saying, "We expect its earnings to improve, helped by the economic recovery and the effects of industry restructuring."

Dubai Dessert Series products sold at CU convenience stores. BGF Retail website

Researcher Yoo explained, "From 2024 to 2025, the convenience store industry shifted its focus from quantitative growth to qualitative growth by closing stores. If 2024 was a year when closures were centered on the third- and fourth-largest players, 2025 was a year when even the first- and second-largest companies began scrapping stores." He went on to say, "This year, BGF Retail is expected to see both sales recovery and margin improvement, driven by the impact of the aforementioned store restructuring in the industry, the low base in the first half of 2025, and the recovery in product competitiveness that began to appear from the fourth quarter of last year."

The details of the fourth-quarter "product competitiveness recovery" lie in the "Dubai Dessert Series." Regarding BGF Retail’s fourth-quarter 2025 operating profit of 64.2 billion won, up 24% year-on-year, Researcher Yoo analyzed, "There was a 5 billion won cost impact due to changes in accounting treatment related to ordinary wages, but sales per store recovered thanks to growth in sales of general merchandise such as the 'Dubai Series,' and effective control of SG&A expenses generated operating leverage."

BGF Retail’s full-year results last year were the "largest ever." On a consolidated basis, BGF Retail posted record-high annual revenue of 9.0612 trillion won and operating profit of 253.9 billion won. These figures represent increases of 4.2% and 0.9%, respectively, compared with the previous year.

BGF Retail was the first in the convenience store industry to launch the Dubai Dessert Series and has since continued to roll out related products. The Dubai Chewy Chapssaltteok, launched in October last year, sold out repeatedly from the moment of its release, with sales reaching 2.3 million units, while the subsequently launched "Dubai Mini Towel Cake" sold around 250,000 units. Cumulative sales of Dubai-related products at CU convenience stores are reported to have exceeded 10 million units.