Yogiyo to launch dark store brand in second half of this year
Yogiyo deliveryman starts engine of his scooter to deliver food in Hyehwa-dong, Jung-gu, Seoul, in this 2019 file photo. / Korea Times photo by Park Ji-yoon
By Kim Jae-heun
The country's No. 2 delivery service application Yogiyo will launch a new dark store brand similar to “B Mart” operated by the largest delivery player Baedal Minjok (Baemin). Its operator Delivery Hero announced Thursday it had scouted a new director, Kim So-jung, for the dark store business from eBay Korea. Kim is an e-commerce and retail business expert.
Yogiyo has not revealed what exactly its new dark store application will look like or how it will operate. But the company said it will be similar to the “B Mart” service currently run by Baemin.
The B Mart service delivers instant food products and home meal replacements. It currently supplies some 3,600 products including fruit, salads, pet items and fresh food. CEO Kim Bong-jin of Woowa Brothers, which operates Baemin, has publically introduced B Mart as the main business of the company this year.
Unlike the services operated by e-Commerce firms, which deliver products to customers the next day or even later, B Mart will bring customers' orders within an hour after they pay through the app. The minimum order is 5,000 won ($4.22).
The speedy delivery is possible because Baemin has most of the items available in their 16 distribution centers in Seoul.
Yogiyo said their brand set to launch in the second half of this year but nothing has been decided about business yet.
Currently, it has established a strategic alliance with local convenience stores including CU, GS25 and Seven Eleven to provide the delivery platform. In the end of last year, it also signed a business deal with Homeplus Express to help customers order some 400 items with its mobile phone application.
A retail insider said online platforms are the future as delivery players have started to expand their business into the e-commerce sector.
“If offline distributors don't start to focus more on their online platforms, they will be out of the game in the blink of an eye,” the insider said.