Food delivery service evolves day by day in Seoul

American fast casual restaurant chain Shack Shack opened its first Korean branch on July 22. To eat the burger, people have to wait for about two hours. Jeon Myeong-gyu (32), however, didn’t wait in line and ate the burger at home with his friends using delivery service. Though Shack Shack does not provide a food delivery service, he used a food delivery application that buys foods a user orders and delivers them at home.

The food delivery service evolves in many ways. In the past, the delivery service was mainly focused on delivering foods from shops with their own delivery man such as Korean black bean sauce noodles (Jajangmyeon), fried chicken, and pizza. Nowadays, types of food delivered have been expanded to gourmet meals of famous chef restaurants that need to wait a long time to enjoy the food.

Siksinhot, a food delivery application, unveiled a service that delivers the food of popular restaurants right to the door in June. The list of food delivered includes Mokpojib, Ulmildae, and 200 other restaurants in Seoul where people have to wait in line to eat.

This application is free from reviews or ads as it only delivers foods of famous restaurants that customers want at their requests. Some application services caused troubles as they hided negative reviews or recommended restaurants, which paid them for advertisements.

Currently, the maximum delivery service fee is 10,000 won (8.94 U.S. dollars), and fees are varied depending on time and distance. The service is only provided in Gangnam and Seocho districts in southern Seoul.

Gourmet meals made by chefs from luxury restaurants are also delivered. Chefly, another online food delivery service, offers the service in collaboration with chefs from famous restaurants. Among them are Chef Yoon Dae-hyeon of Doughroom in Seorae Village, Chef Yoo Seong-nam of Brutus in Itaewon, Chef Cho Gae-hyeong and Lee Kyung-sub of Dosa in Cheongdam-dong.

Chefly delivers both existing and new menu items and provides free delivery service. ”The service has been going viral among women in their 20s and 30s within a month since the service was launched in July and over 60 orders are received per day," a Chefly staff said. "We are planning to expand the participation of famous chefs.”

Companies providing food delivery service prospect that the era of ready-to-cook service delivering all ingredients of a food with recipes will prevail in any time soon. The recipe plus ingredients delivery service is already popular in the U.S. “The current delivery food had some limits in that it is difficult to enjoy the natural flavor of the food due to delivery time," an insider of the food delivery industry said. "The ready-to-cook service covering up the shortcomings will lead the food delivery service market.”

김동욱 기자creating@donga.com