CJ to open pop-up Korean restaurant for promising chefs in Seoul

South Korean food giant CJ CheilJedang Corp. in the second half of the year will open a pop-up Korean restaurant for up-and-coming chefs on the upscale Tehran-ro Street in the Seoul district of Gangnam.

The venue will allow chefs to freely experiment with creative domestic cuisine and engage consumers without fear of failure. Analysts said the company's Chief Growth Officer (CGO) Lee Sun-ho, who heads the food growth promotion division and is the eldest son of CJ Group Chairman Lee Jae-hyun, has launched a full-scale project to develop domestic food.

Industry sources on Sunday said CJ CheilJedang next month will hold an open recruitment of chefs for the pop-up. Those selected can run the restaurant in the heart of Gangnam for three months without the need for capital.

The project, the first of its kind by CJ CheilJedang, will be housed on the first floor of Innoplay, a space for the company's in-house ventures and innovative divisions in the capital's upscale Daechi-dong neighborhood. The chef contestants will use restaurants with cooking spaces and receive educational consulting and marketing support.

The rental period per chef is three months with no rent or maintenance fees charged.

CJ CheilJedang is also mulling starting the pop-up with a small number of seats and gradually expanding it so that the chefs running the restaurant can afford it. Based on consumer response, a second restaurant is also a possibility.

The pop-up is led by CGO Lee as part of the Cuisine K project announced by the company last month. He and his father, Chairman Lee, reportedly discussed whenever eating together what the company's most valuable social contribution could be.

They decided to create a program recognized worldwide for fostering Korean cuisine chefs and shared this initiative within the company in the second half of last year.

CGO Lee also recently launched the Hansik (Korean Food) 245 Team to promote Cuisine K. The team will soon launch start a Korean food lecture series for culinary school students abroad on learning about hansik ingredients from Korean master chefs.

The team's mid- to long-term project is to set up by 2030 an international Korean culinary school to be South Korea's version of France's Le Cordon Bleu.

Write to Soo-Jung Ha at agatha77@hankyung.com