Employees line up to use the in-house cafe operated by Hyundai Greenfood at the Kia plant complex in Monterrey, Mexico. Photo courtesy of Hyundai Greenfood
Hyundai Greenfood is running an in-house cafe at an overseas catering site for the first time. The company has transplanted the “cafeteria-plus-cafe” model, which has emerged as a new revenue stream in South Korea’s institutional catering market, to a site abroad.
According to industry sources on the 18th, Hyundai Greenfood began operating an in-house cafe last month at a Korean auto parts plant located within the Kia manufacturing complex in Monterrey, Mexico. The company entered the local catering market in 2016 when it began running the cafeteria at the Kia plant in Monterrey. The site where the new cafe opened is a contract Hyundai Greenfood recently won.
The cafe currently sells beverages and desserts, including seven types of coffee, four non-coffee drinks and two cakes with cheese and chocolate. Daily sales average about 200 cups, and one in three of the plant’s employees is said to visit the cafe each day.
Hyundai Greenfood’s operation of an in-house cafe at an overseas site is significant in that it extends the domestic “cafeteria-plus-cafe” model abroad. As companies strengthen employee welfare and convenience, in-house cafes have emerged as a factor that can determine competitiveness in winning site contracts. Over the past five years in South Korea, in-house cafes have been run alongside catering operations at 35% of the new sites Hyundai Greenfood has won.
In-house cafes also contribute significantly to profitability. As the culture of drinking coffee after meals has taken hold, usage rates are high at in-house cafes, which are located near cafeterias and offer lower prices. The catering industry estimates that running a cafeteria and an in-house cafe together can lift sales by an additional 15% or so.
Hyundai Greenfood plans to expand the in-house cafe model to its other overseas sites. It intends to apply “Cafe Greeting,” the integrated in-house cafe brand it is developing at home, abroad as well, building a business model that provides everything from meals to beverages and desserts in one place. Hyundai Greenfood is gradually rebranding about 140 in-house cafes in South Korea as Cafe Greeting, and has set a goal of expanding the number of in-house cafes to more than 180 within three years.
An official at Hyundai Greenfood said, “Based on this first overseas in-house cafe, we plan to accumulate know-how in areas such as developing K-beverages and localizing menus, and to expand catering sites that also run in-house cafes overseas,” adding, “We will demonstrate the competitiveness of K-catering at overseas sites as well.”