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Would you wait six hours for In-N-Out? 500 Koreans did.

Published: 15 Oct. 2025, 18:09 Updated: 15 Oct. 2025, 19:58

CHO YONG-JUN
[email protected]

People wait outside the In-N-Out pop-up store in Gangnam District, southern Seoul, on Oct 15. [YONHAP]

The customer first in line arrived at 3 a.m., according to the restaurant manager of Schedule Cheongdam.

They lined up in Apgujeong in southern Gangnam on Wednesday, not for some boutique store, a K-pop pop-up event or a Michelin-starred restaurant, but for In-N-Out.

However, there were only 500-or-so burgers prepared and by the time this reporter visited the restaurant, five minutes before 2 p.m., they were all long gone.

In-N-Out returned to Korea — for just a half a day — on Wednesday as a half-day pop-up store. Despite being the fifth time the popular American hamburger chain has opened a pop-up store in the country, it still didn’t stop Koreans from lining up for the burgers.

“I’ve tasted many different burger brands, but I never had In-N-Out until today, and they are really good,” Cho Ha-young, a 22-year-old customer who waited for almost five hours for the In-N-Out pop-up on Wednesday, told the Korea JoongAng Daily.

In-N-Out pop-up store in southern Seoul on Oct. 15. [CHO YONG-JUN]

The In-N-Out pop-up store was open from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Wednesday at the Schedule Cheongdam restaurant in Apgujeong in southern Seoul.

Despite the news of the pop-up not being announced until the day before the event, hundreds of people showed up even before the store’s opening.

“500 customers were already in the line by 10:30 a.m., 30 minutes before the opening of the pop-up,” the manager said.

Obviously, by the time this reporter got to the store at 2 p.m., it was many hours after they had stopped accepting new customers from joining the line, and I was not able to have a taste of the In-N-Out burger.

In-N-Out pop-up store in southern Seoul on Oct. 15. [CHO YONG-JUN]

Right outside the restaurant, the last 10-or-so people, who had been waiting outside the store since 10 a.m., were waiting to order the final dozen burgers before the pop-up closed soon after.

But as In-N-Out had opened a similar one-day pop-up store back in 2023, 2019 and before, this pop-up doesn’t necessarily mean that the burger chain is preparing for an official launch in the country. Instead, it is more likely that the impromptu pop-up stores are a means of protecting the registered trademark rights in Korea. In Korea, the trademark rights may be extinguished if it is not exercised for three years or longer.

In-N-Out, a privately owned company, has also been clear multiple times that they have no intentions of expanding the brand as a franchise. They also operate on a “never-frozen” ingredients policy where patties and lettuce are transported fresh.

Similarly, all the chefs who cooked the patties were from In-N-Out restaurants in the United States, and all the ingredients for the burger and fries came directly from established stores.

“I don’t know, it’s not bad, but I also don’t think it’s worth the time I waited today,” a man in his twenties, who declined to share his name as he didn’t feel comfortable sharing negative comments about the pop-up store, said.

“People had to line up around the store and back into this construction site, and it was a nightmare for me to park — I wouldn’t have come here if I knew the conditions were this bad.”

In-N-Out pop-up store in southern Seoul on Oct. 15. [CHO YONG-JUN]

And similarly for Cho, who had enjoyed the burger, she likely wouldn’t return for another run if In-N-Out came back as a pop-up store.

“The burgers were good, but I probably won’t line up like this if they come again next time,” she said.

“Once is enough for the experience.”

BY CHO YONG-JUN [[email protected]]