▲ Chicken Breast Mart / CEO Seungwoo Hong

[Diet Food]
The number of fat people seems to have increased as many as the infected due to their new habit of staying home longer. Despite the social distancing, the number of people going to yoga, pilates and fitness to keep their body in shape have rather increased in the nation. Food companies are also moving fast with low calorie diet foods and drinks. While egg-only rolls are marching forward, kombucha tea is chasing fast. Talking about diet, experts point out balanced food and exercise as the key factor. And talking of diet food, chicken breast is one of the most sought afters. This is because a 100g chicken breast contains 23g protein but only 0.5g fat and 0g carbohydrate. It has more essential amino acid and unsaturated fatty acid than beef. Rich amidazol dipepheptide in chicken breast also is known to ease fatigue.

[Chicken Breast Mart]
Chicken Breast Mart sells nothing but chicken breasts and diet foods of more than 200 kinds of which 18 kinds are chicken breast. The store in Yongsan, Seoul, has signed a deal with 75 chicken breast and diet food companies and it is the first and the largest diet food store in the nation according to Seungwoo Hong, CEO of Chicken Breast Mart. The company started MVP service from November 2019 and launched the current mart in May 2020 by securing investment from the Seoul Creative Economy Innovation Center and the Korea SMEs and Startups Agency as well as an affiliate of Mega Study Group. The diet foods sold at the store are separated into high temperature and low temperature foods. The former includes protein bars, drinks, breads and cookies and the latter includes chicken breast and various other frozen foods. 

"Some of the bestseller, apart from chicken breast, are low salty and low calorie foods like smoked and sliced-based. You can find microwaves here and there for you to try since it is an offline store which cannot be done online. It is notable that low temperature foods are more selling and I'm working on introducing more frozen food lines" says Hong.

Most diet foods sold at the store keeps similar price range with those sold online. If online diet foods are convenient to buy, offline store provides real touch, feel and taste of the food.

"Diet food market is estimated around 5.5 trillion won ($4.5 billion) last year. We are working to increase our market share around 700 billion won ($582 million) which is around 13% of the whole output. I used to run 2 more stores before the pandemic and I will resume the expansion when the virus is contained. Till then, we will focus on both the offline store and delivery." <PowerKorea>

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