Global Economic Times

“Buying Watermelons and Rice at Convenience Stores” — CU Launches First 'Smart Grocery' Store to Target Neighborhood Shoppers: Hee Chan Kim Reporter / Updated : 2026-05-21 17:11:07

South Korea’s leading convenience store chain redefines local shopping by expanding fresh food categories, optimizing floor layouts, and integrating hyper-local delivery services.

SUWON, South Korea — BGF Retail, the operating company of South Korea's leading convenience store chain CU, announced the grand opening of its first "Smart Grocery" concept store in Suwon. This new store represents a strategic shift toward neighborhood-centric, grocery-focused retail, designed to capture the growing demand from consumers who prefer shopping for fresh food and essential ingredients closer to home.

Unlike traditional convenience stores that primarily stock processed snacks, beverages, and ready-to-eat meals, the CU Smart Grocery store drastically expands its inventory of primary commodities and fresh food items. Customers can now find grocery staples typically reserved for conventional supermarkets, including whole watermelons, fresh rice, onions, cucumbers, and zucchini, prominently displayed right at the front of the store.

Optimized Layouts and Dual-Shopping Tracks To improve the shopping experience, CU has completely re-engineered the interior layout of the Smart Grocery store. The store introduces a dual-track navigation system tailored to different consumer behaviors. The "Quick Track" allows fast-paced customers to grab core convenience items like coffee, cigarettes, and beverages without delay. Concurrently, the "Shopping Track" guides neighborhood grocery shoppers smoothly through shelves of fresh produce, meat, and frozen ingredients.

In a notable departure from conventional layouts, where frozen food units are usually pushed to the perimeter walls, the Smart Grocery model positions large frozen food display cases right in the center of the store. This adjustment increases the visibility of frozen meal kits and meats, establishing a supermarket-like atmosphere within a compact convenience retail space.

Adopting Supermarket-Style Promotions The Smart Grocery store also adopts aggressive promotional strategies inspired by large-scale hypermarkets. CU will publish and distribute a dedicated monthly promotional flyer specifically for this concept store, highlighting key discount programs and special bundle deals. By placing these flyers inside and outside the store alongside promotional posters, CU aims to attract local residents who are actively seeking cost-effective options for their daily meals.

This operational strategy differentiates the Smart Grocery model from CU's other specialized concept stores. While previous iterations—such as the "Ramen Library" for tourists, dessert-focused stores, or "Running Stations" for fitness enthusiasts—focused on experiential concepts for specific demographics, the Smart Grocery format centers entirely on practical, everyday needs within residential communities.

Capitalizing on Hyper-Local Demand and Delivery Integration The launch comes in response to shifting consumer habits in South Korea, where large-scale, bulk-buying trips to suburban hypermarkets are increasingly replaced by frequent, small-scale purchases at nearby neighborhood shops. This trend is especially pronounced among one- to two-person households. Reflecting this shift, CU’s fresh ingredient category has maintained consistent double-digit revenue growth over recent years, increasing by 24.2% in 2023, 18.3% in 2024, and 18.7% in 2025.

To maximize its market reach, CU is tightly linking the physical Smart Grocery store with an Omni-channel delivery ecosystem. Customers can order fresh produce and ingredients through CU’s proprietary mobile application, Pocket CU, as well as via major third-party delivery applications, including Coupang Eats and Baedal Minjeok. This integration ensures that the store acts as a local fulfillment hub, providing ultra-fast delivery directly to consumers' doorsteps.

“As consumer demand for fresh ingredients near residential areas continues to surge, we developed the CU Smart Grocery model to offer an efficient and comprehensive shopping solution,” said an official representative from BGF Retail. “Moving forward, we plan to steadily expand these stores across densely populated residential districts and neighborhoods with a high concentration of single- and two-person households.”