‘Open the Table’, Attracts Strategic Investment Attraction from Hyundai Corporation Holdings
Open the Table, a startup specializing in Home Meal Replacement (HMR), has attracted strategic investment from Hyundai Corporation Holdings. The investment amount cannot be disclosed.
In 2019, Open the Table received a series-A investment with the size of 1.3 billion won from Seoul National University Technology Holdings, Kakao Ventures, GS Retail, and BlueRun Ventures.
Through this investment, Open the Table anticipated utilizing the global business network of Hyundai Corporation Holdings to expand K-Food products and introduce competitive raw materials of agricultural and fishery products and processed materials to raise production competitiveness.
In early 2018, before the shared kitchen was settled in Korea, Open the Table opened “Kitchen Seoul”, a delivery-only shared kitchen in Gangnam, Seoul, and directly planned and launched 10 delivery-only brands. Based on the sales data by launched brands and menus, they quickly released HMR products and opened the way for business expansion in line with the growth of the daybreak delivery market.
After confirming the competitiveness of its products through its own brands, Open the Table pioneered the HMR market with the so-called fabless method that concentrates on trend tracking, developing recipes and manufacturing technologies, and leaves production to giant enterprises or SMEs with specialized plants. In order to raise the operation efficiency of the plants built for the economy of scale, the remaining operation efficiency was utilized while securing price competitiveness. Also, it focused on the competitiveness of manufacturing plants in Vietnam from the beginning to produce products in Vietnam that require manual work, and those products are well received in the online market.
As Open the Table increased the number of products through joint planning with distributors and has been recognized for its product planning and development strength in the market, the collaboration has been expanded with various famous restaurants and currently, the contract has been completed with 50 nationwide gourmet restaurants. In February of this year, it successfully exported its products to the U.S. and Canadian markets for the first time.
CEO Dong-Eun Lee of Open the Table said, “We plan to expand famous restaurant contents in domestic and overseas markets based on the HMR product planning, manufacturing, and distribution capabilities accumulated in Korea. We will also quickly grow the platform business to connect various simple contents to customers at once.”
December 30, 2021, Platum