E-Mart enters Singapore with two corner shops selling K-food

South Korea’s largest supermarket chain E-Mart Inc. has become the first Korean company that has launched a convenience store in Singapore.

The Korean retail giant Shinsegae Group’s unit opened a store in Jurong Point, a major shopping mall in western Singapore, on Dec. 23. E-Mart will open the second store in Nex, a large shopping mall in northeastern Singapore, on the following day. 

E-Mart has joined forces with Emart24 Singapore Pte., a venture backed by Singaporean food and beverage giant Fei Siong Group and other investors, to open the two stores.

The local venture in Singapore is aiming to expand the number of the convenience stores in the city to 10 by the next year and 300 in five years.

The Singapore-based stores are conceptualized as a restaurant or café, selling various types of Korean food. The food includes ready-to-eat products such as tteokbokki, or spicy stir-fried rice cake, crispy sweet and sour chicken, instant meals in disposable cups, lunch boxes, gimbap, or cooked rice with veggies in seaweed, and sandwiches.

E-Mart opened its first convenience store in Kuala Lumpur in June 2021 in collaboration with Malaysia-based United Frontier Holdings Sdn. The Korean supermarket chain operates more than 20 convenience stores in Malaysia.

Write to Jong-Kwan Park at pjk@hankyung.com
Jihyun Kim edited this article.