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K-food, liquor firms hit jackpot from Nvidia CEO's Seoul trip
Crowds gather outside a Genesis BBQ restaurant in Seoul’s Mapo District while Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and the heads of SK Group, LG Group and Naver dine on fried chicken inside, Friday. Courtesy of Genesis BBQ
By Ko Dong-hwan
Genesis BBQ, Oriental Brewery, Orion bask in global exposure
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has secured new partnership deals with Korean tech giants to expand the global supply chains for his firm's artificial intelligence (AI) chips and graphics processing units since arriving in Seoul Friday.
But beyond the U.S. firm's business meetings, Huang's latest visit to Seoul has once again shone a spotlight on Korean food and alcohol brands that appeared alongside him, creating major windfalls for their operators.
The biggest beneficiary was Genesis BBQ. The leading fried chicken franchise won Huang's favor at both a restaurant and a baseball stadium, where he met Korean business leaders and forged new ties.
On Friday, after a dinner with SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, LG Group Chairman Koo Kwang-mo and Naver Chairman Lee Hae-jin near western Seoul's Hongik University, Huang and the conglomerate chiefs visited a nearby Genesis BBQ restaurant for a second round. According to Genesis BBQ, the visit was not planned in advance but was an impromptu stop during a bar-hopping outing. They ordered the Golden Olive Chicken, the brand's signature dish.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang drinks Cass beer while watching a baseball game at Jamsil Baseball Stadium in Seoul, Sunday. Joint Press Corps
Genesis BBQ continued to steal the spotlight on Sunday when Huang visited Jamsil Baseball Stadium to throw the ceremonial first pitch to Doosan Group Chairman Park Jeong-won before a Korea Baseball Organization regular-season game between the Doosan Bears and Kiwoom Heroes. There, Nvidia ordered 113 boxes of Boneless Chicken Crackers from the brand's four outlets inside the stadium for Huang and Park, as well as for Nvidia employees and their families attending the game.
"I came here to enjoy KFC (Korean fried chicken). There is nothing better than chimaek. Go Korea!" Huang said from the mound, drawing loud cheers from the crowd. Chimaek is a portmanteau of the word chicken and the Korean word for beer.
Genesis BBQ, which currently operates 800 stores in 57 countries, said its Hongdae restaurant saw a larger-than-usual number of visitors over the weekend following Huang's visit on Friday. Sales during the period jumped more than 20 percent from the previous week.
HiteJinro and Oriental Brewery (OB) also enjoyed global exposure on Friday as their beer and soju brands filled the table during a pork belly barbecue dinner attended by Huang and the three Korean business leaders before their chicken outing. Huang and Chey met again on Sunday at a Kkanbu Chicken restaurant in Seoul's Samseong-dong area in Gangnam District. It was the very place where Huang met last October with Samsung Executive Chairman Lee Jae-yong and Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Eui-sun.
The tables featured HiteJinro's Terra beer, Chamisul soju and Ilpoom Jinro soju, as well as OB's Cass beer, all among the country's top-selling alcoholic beverages.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, right, and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won hand out Honey Banana Mat (HBM) Chips to a crowd outside a Kkanbu Chicken restaurant in Seoul, Sunday. Yonhap
The product exposure continued later that night when the business figures greeted a crowd gathered outside the restaurant and handed out some of Huang's favorite Korean snacks and beverages, including Binggrae's Banana Milk, Orion's Choco Pies and Paldo's Rice Punch. News cameras captured a young girl handing a Choco Pie to Huang outside the restaurant, a scene that quickly went viral online.
Among the giveaways was Honey Banana Mat (HBM) Chips, a snack developed through a collaboration between convenience store chain 7-Eleven and memory chipmaker SK hynix. The product's name HBM references high-bandwidth memory, the advanced memory technology that has strengthened ties between Nvidia and the SK Group affiliate.
The person who paid for the barbecue dinner that night was Naver Chairman Lee Hae-jin, who used the company's Naver Pay digital wallet service. Picking up the bill for all diners in the restaurant, Lee tapped his smartphone on a payment terminal at the cashier's counter, completing the transaction in seconds and offering Huang a seamless demonstration of the platform's convenience.