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배달의 민족: The Delivery Nation Introduction On a wintery December afternoon in Seoul, Mike Kim reviewed his presentation for Baedal Minjok’s (pronounced “Bay-dah-lee Min-choke” 배달의 민족) strategic growth plans for the coming year. A San Francisco native, Mike joined Baedal Minjok - South Korea’s premier food delivery service, one year ago in November 2014 as its Senior Director in Corporate Development. Recruited directly by Baedal Minjok’s CEO Kim Bong-Jin, Mike moved from Silicon Valley to Seoul to lead the company’s global business strategy and accelerate its growth in the Asia-Pacific regional market. In the past 5 years since its founding in March 2011, Baedal Minjok has grown rapidly from a small startup to the number one food delivery service in South Korea, commanding 70% market share of an industry estimated at 1 trillion won ($862 million [USD]). Averaging 2 million orders a month and 1,816 phone calls an hour1, the food delivery app known for its playful, colorful user interface characterized by uniquely Korean cartoon illustrations. It hosts an impressive 150,000 of the estimated 450,000 restaurants in South Korea2, on its platform - the largest listing directory of food outlets in the country. (See Exhibit 1 for Visitors to Top 3 Food Delivery Service Applications and Exhibit 2 for Visitors to the Baedal Minjok site). Mike and his team had been exploring expanding the business beyond South Korea, leveraging on the strengths of the enterprise that had attributed to its phenomenal success at home. After months of due diligence and research, talks had been initiated with LINE, Japan’s leading mobile messenger service to launch a joint venture food delivery service in Japan. As Mike walked to his meeting with Kim Bong-Jin and the executive team, he wondered what an international expansion would mean for the enterprise. 1 http://www.woowahan.com/?page_id=40 2 Korean Food-Order Directory Service Seeks to Build ‘Delivery Nation’ http://blogs.wsj.com/korearealtime/2015/01/23/korean-food-order-directory-service-seeks-to-build-delivery-nation/ (accessed April 2016) This case was prepared by Joanna Ghazali under the supervision of professor Gregory L. Stoller as the basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation. Copyright © 2016, Gregory L. Stoller. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by any means–electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise–without the permission of the author Baedal Minjok (“The Delivery Nation”) Woowa Brothers Corp (“Elegant Brothers”) was founded by two brothers in 2010 - Kim Bong-Jin, a designer, and Kim Kwang-Soo, an engineer. Their company launched Baedal Minjok in 2011 as a restaurant listing service. Decades of intense competition in South Korea’s food and beverage industry have led restaurants and food outlets to seek competitive advantages by offering a myriad of convenience services in a bid to secure more customers. According to the Korea Foodservice Industry Association, Korea has 12 restaurants per 1,000 people – more than twice the concentration of Japan and 6 times as many as the United States, with 7,400 new fried chicken restaurants open each year in South Korea3. By comparison, Boston has approximately 2,000+ restaurants and 10,000+ in New York City. As a result, nearly all restaurants in South Korea maintain delivery services in the form of motorcycle riders that bring food ordered via telephone call to a location specified by the customer. In Seoul, people are not limited by the requirement of an address, and are able to order food to be delivered to them under a tree in a park, at an unmarked spot along the beach, or even from a moving bus! Speed and convenience are characteristic of nearly all local food delivery services. South Koreans can have nearly any type of food delivered to them 24/7, all year round. Here are some examples below: Food deliveries in South Korea can be delivered anywhere and in wide varieties Sources: www.luckyturtles.com ; www.craigslistrichmond.com (accessed April 2016) 3 Restaurant Boom Bodes Ill for Korea Economy http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324549004579064990665622138 (accessed April 2016) 2 Before Baedal Minjok, most restaurants relied on printed flyers containing the menu, phone number and hours of operation as means of soliciting orders. These flyers were handed out on the street outside the shop, slipped under the doors of homes, and under the windshield wipers of parked cars. South Koreans desiring a hot meal at the end of a long work day were limited to their personal collection of flyers, usually from the near vicinity of the residence. Once deciding on a restaurant, a hungry customer would place an order via phone call to the restaurant. Within half an hour, the food would be delivered in a metal box with shelves, or a plastic box with a lid containing individually packed portions of food in bowls, plates and trays. Unlike conventional food deliveries elsewhere in the world, 50% of South Koreans receive a lot of disposable dining and drinkware. For the others, they receive plates, bowls, chopsticks and other cutlery made of durable materials similar to those used in the restaurant or the home (i.e., metal or plastic). The delivery men usually hand over the plates and bowls to the customers without the delivery box, especially in Chinese restaurants and for fried chicken. The above pictures show Korean foods, and as Korean foods contains many of the plates and soups, and it comes with many side dishes, the Korean foods are delivered with the large delivery plates. So, in many cases, customers have to put the plates and bowls into plastic grocery bags and leave them outside the house for the delivery men to collect them. Above: Food delivery fliers Below: Deliveries arrive in non-disposable containers Sources: www.vickieeisenstein.com and www.seoulistic.com (accessed April 2016) As a result of these high industry standards for convenience, South Korean culture evolved to rely on food deliveries in everyday life. Recognizing the pain point arising from the reliance on printed flyers, Kim Bong-Jin resolved to simplify the process by aggregating the information from flyers on their new restaurant listing service - Baedal Minjok. At the start, the team walked the streets of Seoul, collecting thousands of restaurant flyers, scanning them and providing a basic interface for users to sort through types of restaurants and neighborhoods on their mobile phones. From there, users still had to place their orders by calling the restaurants. The popularity of the listing prompted the eventual development of an increasingly sophisticated application that provided a convenient and fun user experience catapulting it into a market leader serving a nation craving late night deliveries of hot, crispy fried chicken. 3 Through a series of strategic acquisitions and rebranding exercises, Mike Kim and the team at Woowa Brothers Corp launched several subsidiaries over the course of 2015 to expand on the services chiefly provided by the Baedal Minjok mobile app. The Mobile App Business Model Baedal Minjok’s platform is available on Android, iOS, Google TV, and Windows phone. Its interface features colorful Korean cartoon illustrations and is easy to use. Users can sort, filter and search through options and view pictures of menu items with prices as well as reviews written by other users. Upon receiving their order, users can snap a photo (usually of their food), and uploading it onto the review section of the business with a comment and an emoji reaction as well as a starred rating. Listed eateries are given the option of paying monthly for a listed subscription or listing their business on the platform for free. Both paid and unpaid subscription listings provide the option of calling the restaurants directly through the phone number listed on the app to place an order. In order to track the amount of business generated by the app, Baedal Minjok provides a specially designated number for each of its the restaurants listed on its app4, and generates analytics from the number of calls placed to the designated numbers. In this way, both the platform and restaurant are able to quantify the value of business generated by listing on the app. Interestingly, registering so many phone numbers has designated Woowa Brothers Corp as a licensed South Korean phone company. Restaurants with paid subscriptions unlock functionality enabling users to order food directly on the Baedal Minjok application. Businesses who choose to pay for their listing subscription have a choice of a premium subscription or a regular subscription, with premium subscribers gaining priority over regular subscribers in order of appearance on the directory list. Unpaid subscribers appear below both premium and regular paid subscribers. Regardless of the subscription choice of the restaurant, users do not incur any additional cost in ordering deliveries on the app and only pay for the food they order and the taxes and charges typically associated with dining. Baedal Minjok’s convenient in-app ordering and payment feature is the result of its partnership Kakao Pay in October 20145, a payment service similar to PayPal launched August 2013 by Kakao Corp. Before the integration of Kakao Pay into the app, Baedal Minjok users could pay through credit card, mobile phone billing and mileage points; all of which required several authentication and verification steps that increased the complexity of ordering a food delivery. 4 Korean Food-Order Directory Service Seeks to Build ‘Delivery Nation’ http://blogs.wsj.com/korearealtime/2015/01/23/korean-food-order-directory-service-seeks-to-build-delivery-nation/ (accessed April 2016) 5 Baedal Minjok adopts Kakao Pay for Easier Payment Process http://www.techforkorea.com/2014/09/18/baedal-minjok-adopts-kakao-pay-for-easier-payment-process/ (accessed April 2016) 4 Until recently, Baedal Minjok as well as other food delivery services in South Korea also charged listed businesses a commission on transactions originating from the app.