Convenience stores roll out winter snacks early as cold snap arrives ahead of schedule

Fish cake sales jump 667%, roasted sweet potato sales up 131%

GS25 has launched its winter food lineup — including instant fish cakes, roasted sweet potatoes and fish-shaped pastries — to get ahead of seasonal demand. [Provided by GS25]
GS25 has launched its winter food lineup — including instant fish cakes, roasted sweet potatoes and fish-shaped pastries — to get ahead of seasonal demand. [Provided by GS25]

An early cold snap in October has convenience stores rushing to put winter snacks on shelves. Chains are moving up the sales season for staples such as steamed buns, instant fish cakes and roasted sweet potatoes, while also rolling out new products.

According to the retail industry Friday, CU began selling steamed buns — a signature winter snack — on Wednesday. GS25 started offering instant fish cakes, roasted sweet potatoes and fish-shaped pastries late last month. Both chains moved their winter lineups up by one to two weeks compared with last year. Seven-Eleven launched its winter product sales about eight days earlier than last year, and E-mart24 pushed the start of some winter items forward by about a month.

Winter snack sales are climbing fast. GS25's instant fish cake sales jumped 667 percent in the Oct. 1–5 period compared with the same days the previous week. Roasted sweet potato sales rose 131 percent, hot Americano sales increased 37 percent, and sales of hand warmers and heat packs surged 1,149 percent.

At CU over the same period, instant fish cake and roasted sweet potato sales rose 60 percent and 50 percent, respectively, from the prior week. Hot Americano sales climbed 57 percent and hot bread products jumped 136 percent. At Seven-Eleven, heat pack sales soared 1,490 percent, while fish cake and roasted sweet potato sales rose 163 percent and 86 percent, respectively. E-mart24 saw heat pack and roasted sweet potato sales surge 349 percent and 337 percent, respectively, and stocking sales jumped 85 percent.

Winter snack sales varied sharply with temperature. An analysis of GS25's instant fish cake sales data over the past three years found that daily sales were 74 percent higher on days when the average temperature fell below 15 degrees Celsius than on days when it stayed above that threshold. Taking that pattern into account, GS25 began its full winter food operation at around 5,000 stores nationwide on Oct. 1.

The variety of winter snacks is also expanding. CU added freshly made corn pies and apple pies — prepared on-site — to its existing lineup of steamed buns, fish cakes and roasted sweet potatoes. The chain is also broadening its range with warm-to-eat sandwiches and pizza slices, targeting demand for convenient winter comfort food.

GS25 has partnered with Busan fish cake brand Goraesa Eomuk to sell six varieties of instant fish cake — including original flat squares, assorted fish cakes and rice cake skewers — at prices starting around 1,000 won ($0.72), keeping costs low for shoppers. The chain also launched an "instant highway rest-stop roasted potato," bringing a snack typically found at highway service areas to convenience stores.

Seven-Eleven is differentiating its roasted sweet potato lineup by variety. It will sell "Hopungmi," a domestic variety known for its moist texture, through November, then switch in December to "Beniharuka," a variety aged for about three months to boost sweetness, for roughly three months. E-mart24 plans to release an exclusive steamed bun product developed in collaboration with Samlip later this month.

"Winter snacks matter not just for their own sales but because they can drive purchases of other products, like hot drinks," a retail industry official said. "We are moving up the sales season to get ahead of demand, while also differentiating our product range and quality to strengthen the overall winter lineup."


korean@heraldcorp.com