After graduating from Seoul Hyundai Occupational Training College in culinary arts, Chef Seong-min Jeon has been living and breathing Italian cuisine. After building up experience at various restaurants in Korea, he spent four years in New Zealand, working at a restaurant called La Forchetta.
Seong-min with his colleagues at La Forchetta
Once he turned 30, he decided to give his dream of running his own restaurant a shot, and in March 2018, he opened Classicdang—a portmanteau of “classic” and the Korean word for restaurant (“sikdang”). Excitement quickly gave way to dread, however, when reality set in. “I had learned how to cook, not run a business,” said Seong-min.
Running a small business can be very overwhelming for a newcomer, and in particular, Seong-min started seeing all the miscellaneous expenses that he never had to worry about while working only as a chef begin to pile up. From cooking utensils to kitchen towels, everything seemed to cost more than he had expected.
“When I was just a restaurant employee, I just used the cookware and utensils as given, so I had no idea,” said Seong-min. “But once I began running my own business, I realized I had to continually replace my tools, not just for hygienic reasons, but also because you don’t want your kitchen to look dirty to customers.”
Seong-min, who used Coupang often for his personal shopping, decided to try purchasing products from Comet, Coupang’s private label brand, based on its highly affordable price and great reviews. Once he tried it and realized that the products were also of very high quality, he began to regularly purchase cookware, utensils, and other supplies only from Coupang. Now, his restaurant’s signature gnocchi dish is made using only Comet frying pans.
“You need a lot of potatoes to cook gnocchi, but this means that you’ll produce a lot of starch while cooking, and the pan quickly gets sticky,” said Seong-min. “So, when I cook gnocchi, I use coated pans. Typically, cheaper coated pans usually wear out their coating in two to three months, but Comet pans last a lot longer. They’re also fairly light for their size.”
Cooking with a Comet pan
Seong-min also began turning to Coupang as his go-to supplier for ingredients, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. “It seems that food suppliers have reduced the number of delivery drivers due to COVID,” he said. “Originally, they delivered ingredients every day from Monday to Saturday, but now they only deliver on the weekdays. That makes it difficult to run a restaurant, because you need to stock up enough for three days to have enough for the weekends.”
As a Coupang WOW member, however, Seong-min could order from Rocket Fresh 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with free delivery for orders of KRW 15,000 or more (less than 12 dollars), and have ingredients delivered in a matter of hours. “When I bought clams from Rocket Fresh, it was delivered to me on the same day,” he said.
Seong-min also relies on Coupang to find ingredients that can be hard to find in Korea, such as burrata and imported pasta noodles. “Burrata cheese is used often in Italian cuisine, so I use it a lot in salads, pastas, and pizza,” he said. “However, it’s not easy to find at the mart, and it’s difficult to use food suppliers with a limited income, so I use Coupang a lot.” He added, “It’s also more convenient to get cheese from Coupang than from a food supplier, as it also has same-day delivery. That’s why I only buy burrata cheese from Coupang now.”
Classicdang’s second store entrance
Despite it being his first business—opened only a couple years before the pandemic—Chef Seongmin has been so successful that he was able to open a second restaurant last year. With the vast selection, fast delivery, and affordable prices that Coupang provides, Seong-min feels reassured to have a partner he can always count on as a customer, so that he can continue doing what he loves most and delight customers of his own.
