CJ Cheiljedang has released the meal kit brand ‘COOKIT.’

Food makers designating home meal replacements (HMRs) as a future growth engine are accelerating efforts to ramp up their presence in the half-cooked meal kit segment. CJ Cheiljedang’s recent entry in the meal kit sector will make competition among food makers fiercer than ever.

The meal kit is a kind of home meal replacement with a package of food materials prepared for cooking for two or three persons. Apart from ordinary HMRs, being heated in a microwave, users can experience the satisfaction of cooking for 15 to 30 minutes – about half the time it normally takes - according to the enclosed recipe. Foodstuffs of the home kit package are fresher as they are delivered in a chilled condition.

The food industry forecasts that the value of the meal kit market will surge from about 20 billion won as of the end of last year to 40 billion won by the end of this year, and to some 700 billion by 2024.

In particular, popularity of the meal kid is rising among parents who want their children to eat foods cooked with fresh foodstuffs and unmarried men or females in their 20s and 30s who want to experience cooking sans the cumbersome process of preparing foodstuffs, industry official said.

Vice President Kim Kyung-yeon, in charge of online business at CJ Cheiljedang, said, “The meal kit products are enjoying popularity especially among parents who want their teen kids to eat home-made meals but do not know what they cook.”

CJ Cheiljedang has released the brand “COOKIT” to enter the domestic meal kit market. The company plans to launch an aggressive marketing blitzkrieg to nurture the meal kit business into an unrivalled HMR business of reaping 100 billion in annual sales.

To this end, CJ Cheiljedang plans to build infrastructure such as Korea’s first meal kit on-line platform, meal kit centers and an early morning delivery system. CJ Cheiljedang held a “R&D talk” session to unveil the brand COOKIT. The brand is CJ Cheiljedang’s ambitious work that can enable cooking of high standards of restaurants with fresh foodstuff at home with ease under a concept of professional chefs’ cooking kit.

The meal kit segment has been already developed in advanced countries such as the United States and Japan. The value of the U.S. meal kit market is estimated at 3.534 trillion won as of last year, while that of Japan amounted to 885.9 billion won.

Vice President Kim of CJ Cheiljedang said the Korean meal kit market is predicted to grow to some 700 billion won in five years on the strength of a rise in HMR consumption, caused by an increase of one or two-person households and on-line food market growth.

CJ Cheiljedang has combined production and all other synergetic effects among subsidiaries to offer new experiences and values to customer and high market potential on top of food R&D capabilities the company has so far accumulated, he said.

Na Hyun-seok, a senior researcher at CJ Cheiljedang, is in charge of R&D for products of the meal kit brand ‘COOKIT.’ (Photos: CJ Cheiljedang)