Choco Pie gets a taste for overseas market

Choco Pie gets a taste for overseas market
Today, shoppers can find chocolate-covered cookies in most convenience stores across the nation, but it wasn’t so easy 30 years ago.

Kim Yong-chan was leading a team of confectionery developers at Orion on a business trip to Georgia in the U.S. in 1973, when he tasted a chocolate biscuit at a hotel cafe.

One bite, and he was hooked.

Convinced that Korea needed its own brand of chocolate snack, the cookie man headed back home to Korea and his lab where he worked day and night to create what we know today as Choco Pie, one of the oldest confectionery treats in Korea.

The journey was no picnic, so to speak, and Kim encountered his fair share of pitfalls, but in 1974, after a series of trials, the cookie made its world debut.

Choco Pie is more than just confectionery enjoyed by Korean consumers. The product is loved around the globe.

The popularity of Choco Pie has even reached Russia thanks to merchants heading home with their pockets stuffed with the sweet treat after visiting Seoul in the mid-1990s.

In fact, Choco Pie sales in Korea last year accounted for just 33 percent of the company’s total 217.6 billion won ($157.8 million) revenue, and the manufacturing company Orion now has a huge market share in the overseas chocolate and cake market.

It has a 60 percent share in China, 51 percent in Vietnam and 42 percent in Russia.

The secret behind Choco Pie’s global success is the way the company tailors the cookies to meet the preference of target countries.

Moon Young-bok, who heads the team of pie developers at the Orion lab, frequently tastes the Choco Pies manufactured at the six different overseas plants. While 90 percent of the basic ingredients are the same, the remaining 10 percent is chosen according to the target country.

For example, since the temperature in Vietnam is generally hot, the company uses chocolate that doesn’t melt too quickly. And as a lot of Russians tend to have a sweeter tooth than other nationalities, the company uses more chocolate.

“I’ve tasted about 10 Choco Pies on average every day since I started working at this company in 1989,” Moon said.

“We are trying to match the taste of our product not only with the changing preferences of consumers in Korea but also cookie lovers worldwide.”

By Choi Ji-young [ojlee82@joongang.co.kr]