▲ Wise Brothers / CEO Taejun Gu

Increasing number of single households is creating a boom in the food industry in South Korea. They willingly open their purse for a simple and nice meal since many of them tend not to cook at home. Restaurants are one by one introducing a meal for single person and food delivery apps are turning their focus on this increasing number of singlers. 

Observing this trend with keen eye, Wise Brothers CEO Taejun Gu is introducing automated kitchen solutions for food startups to make their business as trendy as this new generation of food consumption. Gu optimized his automated kitchen solutions for one man startup or seniors who have limited capitals. 

Wise Brothers is run by specialist teams in IT and cooking. The company has obtained 3 related patents while 2 more are expected to see a light. Wise Brothers has proved its capabilities by being chosen for the Startup Package Support Project of the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, and winning the first prize at the Startup Path Finder 2019, and listing the name in the Start-Up 2030 and the Start-Up NEST in 6th phase. 

As a man of thoroughness, Gu toured 5 automated restaurants in Boston and California, US, for 5 months to make sure the launching of Wise Brothers in South Korea successful. Formerly, he studied mechanical engineering at University of California Irvine, US and completed a master’s course in logistics management at Incheon National University Graduate School of Logistics. 

He then built working level experience as a senior researcher and the director of the research department of his father’s company KIMCO for 3 years. Currently, he is in a master’s course in practical engineering at Seoul National University Graduate School of Engineering Practice. 

When asked about the reason he is into automated kitchen, he answered “Automated kitchen is relatively a new term in South Korea when compared to overseas so I think it has a great potential to grow.”

While carrying out R&D at his office at one hand, he is running an automated kitchen in a shared kitchen cluster near Incheon Metropolitan City Hall. The best selling menus cooked at automated kitchen solutions such as Potcost and Winocook are pork belly and stir fried spicy pork followed by squid and short arm octopus. Winocook in particular can deal with 100 kinds of recipes.

It is his goal to introduce automated kitchen solutions that can cover from heating and laying out the dishes to cooking and washing. He is ambitious to fill 60% of the kitchen operating system in South Korea with automated solutions in a long term perspective which he firmly believes it possible considering the rapidly increasing single households as well as people’s tendency not to cook at home.