Lotteria struggling to get customers back to stores
Folder Burger / Courtesy of Lotteria
By Kim Jae-heun
Lotte Group's fast food chain Lotteria has been looking to draw consumers back to its restaurants after the continued spread of COVID-19 led to a severe drop in the number of in-store customers.
To bring people back, Lotteria introduced unique menu items in July and September, but the releases made little difference to the number of customers eating at its restaurants.
Lotteria launched a new menu item called the Folder Burger in July, which went viral for a month. The Folder Burger consists of chicken or beef with cheese, onions and sauce wrapped in flatbread. Within a month of the menu's launch, 1.7 million of the burgers were sold across the country.
However, the popularity of the folder burger did not last long. Its sales volume decreased by over half in August, numbering roughly 800,000 sold that month. In September alone, sales dropped by another 38 percent, amounting to just 500,000. As there are 1,340 Lotteria restaurants around the country, each branch has only been selling 10 to 15 folder burgers a day.
Lotteria replaced Ken Rhee's image with that of a cartoon soldier on Instagram only 16 days after the launch of its Military Burger meal. / Screen captured from Lotteria's Instagram account
The local burger chain's new “military-style” burger meal has only dragged down the company's reputation farther, some analysts said.
On Sept. 28, Lotteria launched its next burger meal named the Military Burger, hiring Ken Rhee, a popular YouTuber and former Special Forces lieutenant, to promote the meal.
However, only 16 days after Rhee became the company's official promoter, he became embroiled in various scandals including alleged defaults on loans and sex crimes. Lotteria instantly took down the commercial from both television and YouTube. It also removed his face on the company's promotional materials.
The Military Burger meal was the chain's third-most-popular item after the Bulgogi Burger and Shrimp Burger meals in the second week after its launch, but sales dropped sharply with the outbreak of Rhee's consecutive scandals.
“We have decided to take down the ads considering the company's reputation. It is shame that we are embroiled in such a scandal only two weeks after the launch of a new meal,” a Lotte GRS official said.
Lotteria has been trying to introduce unique foods this year to attract more in-store visitors but despite initial high levels of interest, both new menu items failed to meet customers' expectations.
A number of online commenters complained about the poor value of the new menu options, with one saying, “The ingredients in the folder burger meal are too weak and 8,000 won is too much to pay for a military burger.”