It is nothing more than a plain steamed rice cake topped with tomato sauce and cheese, yet lines form before the shops open. Shoppers in their 20s rush in after seeing it on social media, while those in their 50s come because it is, after all, a rice cake.
Online posts referring to rice cakes as "dessert" rose more than 40% between January and last month from a year earlier, according to big data analytics platform Sometrend on the 10th. On Google Trends, search interest in pizza seolgi jumped more than tenfold in 10 days, from 9 on the 20th of last month to 98 on the 1st of this month. The snack, which began at Yeongdo Bridge Rice Cake Shop in Busan, is spreading to rice cake shops in traditional markets nationwide on the back of short-form videos.
What sets this trend apart from earlier dessert crazes is who is buying. The pattern in which consumers in their 20s and 30s discover the product through social media algorithms, seek out vendors, wait in line and post photos that in turn draw more buyers is the same as with Dubai chocolate and butter rice cakes.
But middle-aged and older shoppers are standing in those same lines. Industry watchers cite the fact that the snack is sold at neighborhood rice cake shops in traditional markets, that its 2,000-won price per piece is easy on the wallet, and that the rice cake base lowers resistance even when unfamiliar toppings are added. Variations topped with ingredients familiar to older consumers, such as sweet potato and bulgogi, are seen as a response to that demand.
The trend shows up in the numbers. One rice cake shop at Bupyeong General Market in Incheon saw daily sales surge 30-fold, from 200 pieces to as many as 6,000, within two months of launching the product. A pop-up store run by Gwangju-based Changeok Rice Cake at The Hyundai Seoul drew 10,000 visitors in a week, with 700 people queuing before opening and some customers waiting up to five hours.
Rice cake shops at Myeonmok Market in Seoul's Jungnang District, which sell as many as 2,000 pieces a day on weekends, said they are also seeing foot traffic rise across the entire market as new customers come in.
Department stores have moved as well. Lotte Department Store's Jamsil branch drew more than 20,000 buyers to a "rice cake pilgrimage" pop-up that gathered five well-known regional rice cake shops, including Yeongdo Bridge Rice Cake Shop in Busan and Nonghyup Glutinous Rice Cake in Iksan, North Jeolla Province.
Blog posts mentioning the "rice cake pilgrimage" roughly tripled to 254 in August from 87 in January, while E-Mart's frozen rice cake sales jumped 84.9% from a year earlier.
Industry officials say that for the boom to amount to more than a passing fad, it must be backed by a long-term product strategy that combines fusion menu development with traditional manufacturing techniques.
