New Korean restaurants and soup shops stand out, trend analysis of food service industry in Seoul = Korea

Finda, which provides platforms for small businesses, analyzed trends in restaurant operations using its artificial intelligence (AI) securities analysis platform, OpenUp.
The analysis will focus on food service businesses in Seoul that generated sales at brick-and-mortar stores in 2024. The total number of food service stores is 109,550, down 0.13% from 109,652 in 2023.
The number of new restaurants in the Korean food industry increased by 11.01% to 4,788, the largest increase among the 14 industries in the food service industry.
The number of restaurants specializing in gourmet food increased by 6.72% to 683, and the number of bakeries increased by 5.31% to 714. In fourth and fifth place were hamburger restaurants and Japanese restaurants.
Analysis of in-store payment ratios revealed that men in their 30s were the top in eight industries. In all industries except bakeries, the payment ratio
was ranked in the top three. The average capital required to start a business in Seoul was about 76.81 million won (about 8.01 million yen), an increase of about 750,000 won (about 78,000 yen) from the previous year.
The most expensive business was a hamburger restaurant at 157.13 million won (US$150,000), while the cheapest was a snack restaurant at 38.68 million won (US$37,000).