There is a glutinous rice cake in South Korea that shoppers must line up for at 4 a.m. to buy. Some now bring sleeping bags for a single 9,000-won mochi.
Searches for "Godiva mochi" on NAVER (035420) totaled 83,300 over the past month, according to big data analytics platform Blackkiwi on the 15th. Blackkiwi projects searches will reach 342,000 by the end of October, a 3,488% jump from the previous month.
Google Trends showed interest climbing rapidly from September, just after the product launched, and peaking on Oct. 1 — a surge of more than 5,000% from earlier levels.
The epicenter is Lotte World Mall in Seoul's Jamsil district. Godiva, the Belgian premium chocolate brand, opened a new store there on Sept. 10 and began selling a limited run of 150 "Godiva mochi" a day — chocolate ganache and fresh fruit wrapped in a glutinous rice shell.
Pickup starts at 10:30 a.m., but lines form as early as 4 or 5 a.m., and the day's waiting list closes around 6 a.m. Some customers now show up with one-person tents and sleeping bags.
The frenzy has spilled over to secondhand marketplaces. On Bunjang, a listing offered to buy a single fresh-fruit mochi, priced at 8,500 won, on a customer's behalf for an additional 25,000 won — a service fee roughly three times the product price. Godiva said it is considering expanding beyond the Lotte World Mall location.
Predawn Lines and Resale Premiums: "Tteok-pen Run" Follows Honey Butter Chips and Dubai Cookies
Cases like Godiva mochi have spawned a new term, "tteok-pen run" — combining the Korean word for rice cake, tteok, with "open run," the predawn-queuing phenomenon — and are taking hold as a consumer trend in their own right.
Dessert brand Hanjeongseon is driving its own rice cake rush. Its yogurt glutinous rice cake, filled with fruit and yogurt cream, spread by word of mouth on social media and drew waits of more than 100 minutes on weekdays. A Hanjeongseon yogurt rice cake launched by GS25 last month sold 700,000 units in its first five days.
At a "rice cake pilgrimage" pop-up at Lotte Department Store's Jamsil branch, glutinous mochi from Yukgu Bangagan, a well-known rice cake shop in Sokcho, sold out in the mornings, and bakery-category purchases rose 65% from a year earlier between the 9th and 11th of this month. Seven-Eleven also brought back Japan's Tirol Choco mochi with three times last year's volume. Convenience stores are absorbing demand from shoppers who cannot manage the predawn lines.
Industry officials see the combination of chewy texture and social media posting culture as the core of the rice cake boom. Videos showing fruit and cream hidden inside until the cake is split in half, and the stretch of the dough when pulled, are shared repeatedly on social media and fuel demand.
Analysts say satisfaction with the taste combines with a bandwagon effect — consumption driven by following a trend — to produce a steady stream of items that everyone feels compelled to try.
Food industry officials view the Godiva mochi and yogurt rice cake booms as the latest in a recurring pattern of scarcity marketing, following Haitai Confectionery's Honey Butter Chips in 2014 and Dubai chewy cookies late last year.
During the Honey Butter Chips craze, listings even appeared selling empty bags. Orion's yellow cheese chips sold 5.03 million individual packs within two weeks of launching in March this year. Dubai chewy cookies fetched more than 20,000 won apiece on secondhand markets last year. Still, some caution that enthusiasm for any single product rarely lasts long.