• Food Science and Industry
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• v.50 no.1
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• pp.57-66
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• 2017

Home meal replacements (HMR) are kinds of convenient foods as cooked or semi-cooked foods, which are produced outside of home, to eat directly or after simple cooking in substitution for traditional home meals. Recently the market size for HMR is expanding rapidly around the world due to the changes of global consumer trends, growth of single-person household, increase in economic participation of women, aging population, and so on. The Europe takes over 52.4% of the global market share for HMR in global HMR market, and North America, Asia-Pacific, and Africa-Middle East are following. The most popular HMR products in US and Europe are frozen foods, whereas the market share of chilled products in Asia including Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam are much higher than that in US and Europe. Currently, the trends in HMR is focus on the expansion of the list of products that replace for meals with simple cooking, but it is expected that nutrition-enforced HMR product for aged persons or patients who live alone are requested for the further growth of the HMR market.

• Agribusiness and Information Management
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.1-12
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• 2014

HMR is a home-style food product designed for convenience and cooked outside the home leaving out cumbersome cooking process and consumed at home. The present paper aims to find out factors that influence the consumption of HMR by analyzing data on food consumption during the 3 years between December 2010 and November 2013. Following the classification of Costa et al. (2001), this study categorized HMR products as 3 types as follows: C1 (ready to eat), C2 (ready to heat) and C3 (ready to cook), and examined factors affecting purchase rate and per capita purchase price for each type of HMR product. The results of our analysis show that only the purchase rate of C3 products was influenced by whether the purchaser was housewife with job or not. For those who do not live together with parents, per capita purchase price for HMR was high; and the more they ate out, the higher the purchase rate of HMR was.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.1-20
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• 2015

Home Meal Replacement (HMR) products are ready-to-eat or pre-cooked food products that are consumed at daily home. HMR market has grown rapidly due to societal changes: increases in female social activities, silver population, and one-person households. Consumption channels of HMR can be classified into take-out, delivery, and retail. In Korean HMR market, retail sector is largely growing, but companies are focusing their business on the home delivery sector. Moreover, franchise companies are expanding their areal coverage in the HMR market based on their multi-unit strategy. However, more research on the HMR market is needed as existing studies are limited in conceptualization, classification, and processed food from malls or home-shopping channels. Therefore, we conducted the efficiency analysis on Gukseonsaeng, one of franchises that applied the take-out channel, using DEA method. According to the research on 29 franchisees of Gukseonsaeng, 77.9% of input appeared inefficient for technical efficiency, while 53.3% of input appeared inefficient for scale efficiency. Thus, we found that franchises of Gukseonsaeng are structured in increasing returns to scale (IRS), so enhancing efficiency by expanding scales need to be implemented.

• Journal of Service Research and Studies
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.41-61
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• 2023

The universal form of life in the era of the 4th industrial revolution can probably be summarized as the keyword "non-face-to-face". In particular, in terms of consumption activities, face-to-face contact is gradually changing to a system that minimizes, and offline stores are rapidly changing to non-contact services through kiosks and robots. The social structure is also changing with the passage of time, and most fundamentally, our dietary consumption patterns are changing. In particular, the increase in single-person households and the aging population are having a great impact on changes in the food service industry, which is closely related to dietary life. The HMR (Home Meal Replacement) market has grown significantly as the labor of cooking at home has decreased and the use of substitute foods has increased. As the size of the market has grown, the types of businesses that provide products have also diversified. The development of technology, non-face-to-face culture, and corporate management efficiency are intertwined, and unmanned stores are spreading recently. In this study, service quality attributes of HMR unmanned stores, where competition is gradually intensifying, are classified, and service quality classification using the Kano model and Timko's customer satisfaction coefficient are calculated to provide implications for service management based on customer satisfaction. As a result of the analysis, 'products with short cooking time' and 'variety of products (menu)' were classified as attractive qualities, and 'cleanliness inside/outside of the store' and 'products at reasonable prices' were classified as unified quality. In addition, 'convenience of self-checkout process' was classified as a natural quality, and 'convenience of in-store passage' was classified as an indifferent quality. Furthermore, when the service factor was satisfied within the HMR unmanned store, the factor with the highest satisfaction coefficient was 'product (menu) variety', and the factor with the highest dissatisfaction factor was 'convenience of self-checkout process'. Through the results of this study, it is intended to derive priorities in service quality management of HMR unmanned stores and provide strategic implications for related businesses.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.161-182
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• 2024

The study analyzed the rapidly growing food tech startup in South Korea, focusing on industry classification, core technological domains, investment stages, and growth trajectories. Utilizing the ERIS model, two innovative food tech startups, MyChef and CatchTable, were examined as case studies. Results revealed food tech startups are focusing on information technology and smart distribution technology-oriented solutions rather than traditional food production. This study also found that robotics and AI integration were key technology areas. Analyzing the emergence of food tech startups, investment stages, and cumulative investment amounts based on founding years revealed a trend of scaling operations through rounds of funding, especially after securing SERIES A and B funding. The period between 2014 and 2018 saw a dense concentration of food tech startup establishments, likely influenced by favorable conditions for technological innovation amid the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The high rate of strategic mergers and acquisitions and bankruptcy can be interpreted as the complexity inherent in the food tech industry. The case study of MyChef, which grew into HMR manufacturing, and Wad(CatchTable), which expanded into a restaurant reservation platform, derived the entrepreneurs, resources, industry, and strategic factors that served as success factors for food tech startups. This study has practical implications in that it provides entrepreneurs, investors, and policymakers in the food tech industry with insight and direction to develop strategies in line with market trends and technological changes and promote sustainable growth.