The popularity of bibigo mandu is truly amazing.
In the United States, bibigo mandu have claimed the No.1 spot,
edging out Chinese brands which have dominated the country's
dumpling market for the past 25 years. In Vietnam, bibigo mandu
have joined the ranks of the country's national dumplings and
now stand shoulder to shoulder with dim sum and spring rolls,
the latter of which are a type of dumpling native to Vietnam.
As such, bibigo mandu have grown into a key player in the
global K-Food industry, and their international success is
attributable to three factors, the thin skin characteristic of
Korean dumplings, fillings made using healthy ingredients,
and bibigo's expansive localization strategy.
Now, let's take a close look at the widely embraced
Korean dumplings as well as other popular forms of Korean food.
The key factor of bibigo mandu's success in the U.S. market
is that bibigo differentiated its dumplings as healthy,
delicious food against the Chinese dumplings which
had dominated the market for 25 years, by highlighting
their thin wrapper and vegetable-heavy filling.
In China, bibigo differentiated its dumplings from the others by
emphasizing the fact that thanks to their thin wrapper,
they can be cooked in a range of ways, including steamed, boiled,
roasted, and fried, thus making them suitable for any kind of dish.
For the Vietnamese market, bibigo added locally
favored ingredients seafood and corn into the filling and
packaged each dumpling on a plastic tray so that
the dumplings would not melt but instead stick to each other
during transit in hot weather.
In Russia, bibigo paid close attention to the fact that Pelmeni,
Russian cuisine's own version of dumplings, are made of meat only.
bibigo maximized the texture of the meat used in its dumplings
by using vegetable stock instead of raw vegetables, and it
also developed an anti-soggy dumpling wrapper to suit
the local recipes which prefer adding dumplings into soup
and letting them boil.
bibigo has grown into a global Korean food brand that is inducing a new lifestyle
by incorporating the values sought by people of today with the tradition of Korean food.
Dumplings are not the only food bibigo is known for, as bibigo covers a
wide range of Korean food by offering convenience food products such
as kimchi, rice, soup, stew, porridge, and noodles, and in markets overseas,
bibigo localizes Korean food to suit the taste of local consumers and
local food culture, spreading the genuine taste and style of Korea across the
globe with widely embraced products.
Particularly popular in the U.S. market is a “bibimbap” product that
can be conveniently cooked in a microwave.
And that's why bibigo presented bibi-cone as a signature menu offering that can be
easily enjoyed by people on the move at the major PGA events it sponsored such as
the Northern Trust, the Genesis Open, and the Players Championship, with
the aim of further spreading Korean food across the U.S.
In China, drawing on the fact that Chinese people enjoy seaweed as a snack,
bibigo launched a localized product made by adding locally favored ingredients
such as wasabi, tomatoes, and peanuts to South Korea's bibigo “Gim Snack”,
and the product is being received very well by locals.
In Japan, spicy stir-fried chicken with cheese were named a popular 2017 dish in the
Shin-Ōkubo area, a heavily Korean neighborhood, and the spicy stir-fried chicken craze
has since been spreading with bibigo's “chicken stir-fry sauce” gaining increasing popularity.
The product comes in a package designed to maximize the visual sensation of sizzling cheese
in order to cater to local consumers, who are partial to spicy stir-fried chicken topped
with heaping layers of cheese.
In Vietnam, as well as Korean dumplings which have risen to prominence alongside
Vietnam's national dumplings, bibigo “Cilantro Kimchi”, which contains cilantro, a herb
widely enjoyed in Southeast Asia, has also become popular. The interesting thing is
that the kimchi product, made and produced locally in Vietnam, even gets exported
to other parts of the world, primarily to Europe, where the flavor of cilantro is
much more cherished. Amazing!
Like a locomotive, Korean food is chugging along with its sights
set on reaching every corner of the world.
And at the center of all this is bibigo, which has affirmed itself as an iconic Korean food brand.
bibigo, which stood out from the very beginning of this trend, committedly
endeavored to spread the culture and taste of Korean food and, as a result,
has successfully established itself in overseas markets.
Like this, when Korean food meets a new culture and foreign food meets us,
we can engage and find common synergy with another culture through taste.
And that may be the reason why we cannot wait to see how the infinite potential
of Korean food will manifest in the future.
We look forward to the future of Korean food and of bibigo, which is spreading farther
and wider around the world with its increasingly diverse Korean food products.