A South Korean small company that sparked the K-Kimbap phenomenon by selling out of frozen kimbap at Trader Joe’s has now expanded their sales to Costco.
In a recent interview with the Korea Economic Daily, CEO Lee Ho-jin of Allgot said, “We are planning to sell our kimbaps at Costco in the first half of next year, and we will gradually expand our store locations, starting with Los Angeles and San Francisco.”
Based in Gumi, North Gyeongsang, Allgot is a three-year-old startup food company that launched its frozen kimbap in March and has been making waves in the U.S. in just less than a year. The company sold out of its initial 250-ton batch, equivalent to millions of wraps, in less than a month after it began selling at Trader Joe’s in August.
While some stores began restocking the second batch this week, Trader Joe’s limited the number of units purchased to one or two to avoid selling out.
The frozen kimbap craze began when TikTokers started posting videos of themselves eating kimbap. Then, the online community quickly shared purchasing information and when it would be available, causing Trader Joe’s stores to sell out quickly.
The company attributed the popularity to the convenience of the product, saying, “It is flash-frozen at minus 45 degrees Celsius to maintain its texture, and each row of kimbap is divided into three parts and placed in a plastic container.”
Costco operates more than 590 stores nationwide and has more than 120 million members.
BY EUNYOUNG LEE [lee.eunyoung6@koreadaily.com]
