Allgot’s frozen kimbap to hit Costco shelves in US in H1, 2024

South Korean food company Allgot Co.’s frozen kimbap, which sold out immediately after landing in the US about two months ago, is on another roll there as it seeks to team up with country’s biggest membership-only big-box retailer Costco Wholesale Corp.

“We are seeking to enter Costco in the US in the first half of next year,” Allgot Chief Executive Officer Lee Ho-jin said in an interview with The Korea Economic Daily on Tuesday. “We will start to supply our frozen rolls (to Costco stores) in San Francisco and Los Angeles and then supply them (to Costco outlets) in other parts of the country.”

Allgot’s talks with Costco to sell its frozen kimbap comes following the Korean rolls’ unexpected success in the US less than one month after their debut in the country via Trader Joe’s, an American grocery chain store operator, in early August.

The initial frozen kimbap batch of 250 tons sold out within a couple of weeks in the US, causing a nationwide shortage that will continue until at least Oct. 31, according to US local media.

“I was very confident about the marketability of the frozen kimbap,” said Lee. “But the overwhelming response from overseas consumers has been much greater than we expected.”

Thanks to the frozen kimbap craze, the Korean company plans to ramp up its frozen rolls' production capacity by 10 times, said Lee.

Once the output ramp-up is completed, Allgot will be able to make 300,000 rolls per day in the first half of next year.

The expanded output is expected to also help the company’s frozen rolls add more Korean retailers as its new vendors. The company now supplies its frozen kimbap to only a few retailers at home, such as SSG.com, under the Baba Gimbap brand.

GOING VIRAL ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Kimbap, or gimbap, are seaweed-wrapped Korean rice rolls, which are different from Japanese sushi rolls. The Korean rolls include rice (bap), marinated meat, but mostly beef, a bit of omelet-style egg, carrots, a vegetable such as spinach -- and rolled into seaweed, called kim or gim in Korean.

It's seen as  perfect on-the-go casual meal for Koreans especially during school field trips or family picnics.

But the rolls are normally prepared with ingredients at room temperature and meant to be eaten the same day for the sake of freshness.

Even to most Koreans, the idea of frozen kimbap is very novel, and the news about its smashing hit in the US is a big surprise.

Some attributed the frozen Korean kimbap’s success in the US to social media after being introduced by Korean-American food blogger and digital creator Sarah Ahn on her TikTok channel, garnering more than 11 million views.

Other American influencers immediately followed Ahn, launching their own reviews about Allgot’s kimbap on their own social media platforms, making the Korean frozen roll a real fad in the country.

UNCONVENTIONAL IDEA DEVELOPED BY A NEWBIE

The instant sensation of the frozen kimbap has also come as a surprise to Lee who started Allgot only three years ago.  

He originally ran a construction company, which was commissioned to build a kimbap factory a few years ago. But the project fell through.

The experience, however, sparked his interest in the kimbap-making business and led him to start his own food company in 2020, Lee said.

Allgot spent more than a year developing frozen kimbap and more than 10 billion won ($7.4 million) in production facilities and research and development of quick freezing technology and its patented packaging technology that ensures the taste and freshness of frozen rolls.

Allgot launched its first frozen kimbap rolls in March 2022.

Their sales a month after rollout were a mere 40 million won but the company got a chance to turn around its business thanks to its supply contract with a US vendor at an international food exhibition held in Korea three months later.

The company now exports frozen kimbap to not only the US but also a few Southeast Asian countries, including Vietnam, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines.

Lee attended the Oct. 7-11 Anuga Food Fair, the world’s leading trade fair for food and beverages, in Cologne, Germany, to find new vendors in hopes of repeating its success.  

Allgot is still in the red after massive investments in R&D and facing challenges from its bigger rivals, mostly Korea’s household names in the food industry, that are seeking to develop similar frozen rolls to mimic Allgot’s triumph.

“The frozen kimbap idea came from thinking out of the box, and the result is an innovation that has pioneered a new market,” said Lee. “As a trailblazer, we will enjoy the first-mover advantage.”

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


Sookyung Seo edited this article.