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| Customers wait in line to order at Shake Shack's first restaurant in Busan, in this 2018 file photo. Korea Times file |
By Kim Jae-heun
SPC Group initially had plans to open 25 Shake Shack restaurants in Korea by 2025 and it has already opened 22 on the back of its growing popularity among local hamburger lovers, according to company officials, Tuesday.
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| SPC Group Vice President Hur Hee-soo / Courtesy of SPC Group |
"The appearance of many new premium burger brands, including Shake Shack, has enlarged the size of the local market. It is showing more positive impacts than negative ones with synergy effects created between the competitors," a fast food industry official said.
Shake Shack was brought into Korea by SPC Group Vice President Hur Hee-soo, who is the second son of the company's chairman, Hur Young-in. The younger Hur is said to have worked on securing a business license to operate Shake Shack in Asia for five years after meeting with its founder, Danny Meyer, in the United States in 2011.
The vice president further signed a master franchise contract with Meyer to open Shake Shack restaurants in Singapore in 2019 and in Malaysia this year.
"We are now operating eight Shake Shack restaurants in Singapore and we will open the very first one in Malaysia next year. This will make our business known in the global market," a SPC Group official said.
After the successful debut of Shake Shack in Korea in 2016, many saw potential in the premium burger market and started to jump in.
The size of the burger market here is estimated to have grown from 2.8 trillion won ($2.08 billion) in 2018 to nearly 4 trillion won in 2021, according to the global market research firm, Euromonitor.
International brands like "Good Stuff Eatery" and "Gordon Ramsay Burger" have launched restaurants here, followed by "Frank Burger" and "Downtowner," run by GFFG. Frank Burger has opened 400 restaurants as of July and Downtowner has become a new hot spot among Millennials due to its synergy with donut specialty store Knotted, operated by GFFG.
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