Nonghyup opens first organic farm food cafe

By Jung Sung-ki

It’s almost a ritual in Korea for office workers to stop at a coffee shop after lunch for a jolt of caffeine. Koreans love coffee but for both one’s health and budget an option is to replace coffee and all related concoctions with juice.

The National Agricultural Cooperative Federation, or Nonghyup, opened an organic farm food cafe in Seoul Monday to serve healthier items made from local organic agricultural produce.

Orgafe, a compound name formed from “organic” and “cafe,” features a variety of organic menu options, such as fresh fruit juice, sandwiches made of pesticide-free wheat bread, yogurts and salads with antibiotic-free chicken breast.

“As the number of coffee shops is surging, we will try our best to serve environmentally-friendly, healthy food at Orgafe, which will serve as a new way of finding a market for our agricultural produce,” Kim Hyun-woo, deputy senior manager of Nonghyup’s food marketing bureau, told The Korea Times.

“We operated this cafe for one and a half months as a pilot run, and the response from consumers was quite good,” Kim said, adding the fresh fruit juices and organic sandwiches were popular. The first Orgafe opened on the first floor of Nonghyup’s headquarters in Seodamun, Seoul.

The menu features a total of 63 items, including fresh juices and teas made from organic produce like Jeju Hallabong oranges, peppermint and rubus coreanus fruit. It also serves a variety of bakery items, including muffins and cookies.

Nonghyup plans to open about 30 Orgafe outlets next year nationwide before turning the cafe into a franchise, according to Kim.

Korea has dozens of branded coffee chains operating around 3,000 outlets, run by specialty coffee retailers and even hamburger chains like McDonald’s. The top 10 franchises account for about 2,000 of the shops, with domestic Caffe Bene emerging as the leader with more than 600 outlets.

The rapid expansion of coffee chains throughout Korea has some observers believing that the market has entered a phase of over-capacity and only a few of the current players will eventually survive.

U.S. coffee brand Starbucks is said to be planning to increase its outlets to 700 over the next five years in Korea. The Korean market for specialty coffee retailers is currently valued at around 500 billion won (about $463.5 million) to 600 billion won and has been growing by 15 to 20 percent ever year, according to market experts.