As the "healthy pleasure" trend — managing one's health in easy and enjoyable ways — spreads, the sales formula at South Korea's convenience stores is shifting. Roasted sweet potatoes are selling well in midsummer, blurring the lines between seasonal products, while cigarettes, once the top driver of convenience store sales, are shrinking in share and reshuffling the sales rankings.
Sales of roasted sweet potatoes at CU jumped 67.4% in the third quarter through the 17th of this month compared with the same period a year earlier, according to BGF Retail. Roasted sweet potatoes, along with steamed buns, are traditionally winter items, but summer sales are rising sharply as well. From the 27th of last month through the 9th of this month, when the heat wave peaked, roasted sweet potato sales grew 63.9% from a year earlier — climbing regardless of the heat. CU's roasted sweet potato sales growth had hovered in the 20% range each quarter before surging from the fourth quarter of last year.
CU attributes the shift to the healthy pleasure culture showing up in its sales. An analysis of products bought alongside roasted sweet potatoes at CU found banana milk in the top spot, followed by bananas, soft-boiled eggs, plain milk and chicken breast. Except for banana milk, the second- through fifth-ranked items are all closely tied to diet management. "Sweet potatoes are a classic diet food that people turn to when controlling the type and amount of carbohydrates they consume," a CU official said. "Demand to build meals from quality protein and carbohydrates such as eggs, chicken breast and plain milk is driving a surge in roasted sweet potato sales even in midsummer."
The long-held assumption that cigarettes account for much of convenience store sales is also being shaken. According to BGF Retail's earnings reports, cigarettes' share of CU sales fell to 35.9% in the second quarter of this year from 40.8% in 2020, a drop of nearly 5 percentage points. Food and processed food products are filling the space cigarettes have left behind. Over the past year, cigarettes' sales share fell 1.2 percentage points while the share of food and processed food rose 1.3 percentage points.
At GS25, sales of food and beverages tied to weight and health management are also growing notably. Through August 17 of this year, GS25's salad product sales rose 38.5% from the same period last year, while chicken breast sales increased 20.3%. Protein drink sales climbed 27.9%. Notably, protein drinks overtook banana milk products in the first half of this year to become the top-selling category within GS25's processed milk segment for the first time.
The industry is working to capture this demand by strengthening related product lines in line with the health management trend. CU began selling health functional foods at some 6,000 stores in July of last year and plans to add more than 2,000 stores carrying such products this year. It is also implementing a "Healthcare 2.0 strategy" to expand natural fruit concentrates and health-related foods developed in partnership with pharmaceutical companies.
GS25 is likewise expanding product plans that reflect the health management trend within popular lines such as gimbap. In the second quarter of this year, GS25 rolled out tuna-and-egg gimbap and egg-and-pollock-roe-mayo gimbap, followed last month by items such as cheese tonkatsu gimbap, with protein content raised to 15-17 grams, double the previous level. The number of protein drink items it carries has grown from three in 2020 to about 50 now.
"Judging by sales trends, the healthy pleasure trend is expanding steadily," an industry official said. "Coupled with the popularity of weight-loss drugs such as Wegovy and Mounjaro, health management will establish itself as a long-term consumption trend."
