The 8th IFIES International Food Industry Exhibition, Seoul 2010

Last Saturday was the last day of IFIES International Food Industry Exhibition, Seoul 2010.
@ Kintex Exhibition Centre.

The main theme of the event was promoting Korean food variety and market opportunities.

Health, Safety, Organic, and Fermentation were some of positioning for Korean food.
Most of the manufactured food was modified from traditional Korean food. They adopted the characteristics/merits of Korean Food.
Ex) Ginseng jelly, Black Garlic Cereal, Potato Root Deserts, Kimchi pills, Instant Rice Noodles, Pumpkin Rice Crackers, natural salt, Soup-base powder, Makkuli (Korean Rice wine?) etc.

A lot of samples, too!






Kintex, Ilsan

Vancouver Dining Review Sites

Foodvancouver.com is a dining review site for people looking for restaurants in Vancouver. To list the horizontal layout of some categories:

-Restaurants
-Dining Guide
-Recipes
-Special Diets
-News
-Coupons
-Events
-Videos
-Site map














Benefits: What I like about this site is it has a page dedicated to coupons and events, which give me extra incentive to dine-out with the feeling that I made a "wise" choice. In addition, I found the famous "Dine Out Vancouver 2010" event on this website and was relieved that I have not missed the deadline for reservation. One more complement to add is its usability; I find it as practical as it can be, just by looking at the coupon site, site map if someone wants to get a bird-eye view of all the contents.




















Overall: What makes the dining review sites different from Food blogs is the layout. You can get the most relevant information in the order of your choice. (Not to mention that it has links for maps and shows the type of restaurant on the top to get a quick idea of what I am looking at). For example, you can find restaurant reviews by region/cuisine/atmosphere etc. Then, you can further have them ranked in the order of best reviews/most views/price/ alphabetical order. In other words, it is user-friendly so that you can save time searching for your tastes.


Some dining review sites for Vancouver restaurants
Foodvancouver.com
Urbanspoon.com
Dinehere.ca
Yelp.ca

Source:
Foodvancouver.com

Food Blog Aggregators (US/CAD)

FOODBUZZ is a U.S.-based "blog aggregator." It aggregates, organizes and curates nearly 2 million blog posts from 10,000 food blogs worldwide. It allows visitors to share their passion for food and dining. It helps food bloggers to platform blogs and monetize their traffics. Also it provides marketing solutions for hundreds of food brands. To prove its powerful standing online:

-10 million global unqie users
-Top 3 Online Food Property
-Growing 15% per month
-Curate 1.7 million pieces of food content
In addition, it has won 2009 WEBBY AWARDS Nominee, OMMA AWARDS for Excellence, and WEBAWARD.

Benefit: Since it is pretty well-known site, tagging the widget, FOODBUZZ, on your blog will increase the credibility of your own blog. And if your posts get on the top lists, you will get an extra tag-widget of recognition.



FOODBLOGS is also a "blog aggregator." The contents on the site are in the view of external blog writers not FOODBLOG or its administerators. It basically provides the service of convenience to visitors: aggregating blog posts into a central site for easy filtering process to personalize information. You can:

-Keep up with your favorite blog
-Discover new food blogs
-Block food blogs you choose not to follow
-Search through thousands of food blogs to find your interest

Benefit: What makes it apart from other blog aggregator is strong customized usability: you can tag, save and organize as well as block the posts you choose. You can also post your own blog to increase the chance of online presence as well as of winning the top blog ranking.

Final Thoughts: What makes these blogs different from other dining review sites is more pictures, and the storyline of dining experience as opposed to the message from extreme opposite ends. I feel more related to writer's review since I get to know the writer's tastes better.

Here is the canadian food blog list posted on a blog:
http://www.pho411.ca/blog/list-of-canadian-food-blogs/

Source:
FoodBuzz.com
Foodblogs.com
http://www.pho411.ca/blog/list-of-canadian-food-blogs/
Pictures: http://www.foodbuzz.com/recipes/2071800-broccoli-and-cheddar-twice-baked-potato

My Technographic Status in Food Network

As my Blog is mostly about finding ways for Korean Food Marketing, I have been looking into many online food communities: Food Blogs, Restaurant Reviews, Social Media like Twitter, FB, YouTube, and Flickr as well as Canada Food Network websites.

The strongest selling point of these online tool is the viral marketing effect. They are linked by overwhelming variety of Social Media Tools (which I would like to try out some day).





So far, I have signed up for Twitter to be the follower of food buzzers and get a bird-eye view of overall online food networks in North America and beyond(some day). For now, I am on my baby steps keeping track of all those instant updates. Hopefully, my technographic status will move up from spectators and joiners to collectors and creators.

BBC SuperPower

BBC has an exclusive webpage, SuperPower, to explore "the power of the internet." The webpage harnesses both one-way and two-way communication in providing information to visitors. There are 8 news categories in demonstrating the power of internet:

-On&Off: Documentaries with experimentations
-Blogworld: Stories of some of the best bloggers in the world
-Virtual Revolution: Speakers on the evolution of internet over the past 20 years
-Digital Giants: Interviews with world-renown internet experts such as Google CEO, the founder of Wikipedia
-SuperPower Nation: How multilingual community is formed
-The Power of the Web: How disabled community is formed
-My World: making a short video in my perspective
-More SuperPower Stories: more stories about internet through BBC radio and TV

As the online community about online communities, the SuperPower webpage is provides all types of online marketing tools such as:

-Online Radio
-Podcasts
-Radio (FM, AM, SW)
-e-Newsletter
-Mobile
-Install Widgets
-Twitter


MY THOUGHTS
What I like about SuperPower is the quality of the source: Crediblility, Recency, and Applicability. My favorite page was its statistical page, "Visualizing the Internet," the instant updates on worldwide internet usages even at this moment.

I think it is a great way of promoting the brand in a broader scope, for a traditional media like BBC, to create a resourceful online community. It is especially attractive source to get more information about the power of internet since BBC has the brand image of "international news" source, making its information more applicable to everyone and less biased than other national broadcasts. So BBC is indeed making use of its credible status on TV, airs documentaries, introducing the growing importance of internet and naturally convincing viewers to visit SuperPower to find out more. This way, in turn, increases its website traffic of both SuperPower and BBC main page. In this sense, the Superpower website is an effective way to bring its current viewers online and attract prospective channel-flipping, news-viewers by having an access to latest updates "wherever you leave."
BBC can not only try to transform Inactives into spectators and joiners, but also use viral marketing by listening, talking, and energizing Collectors, Critics, and Creators at the Superpower community. All in all, I think BBC is leveraging the power of internet to increase its brand equity both online and offline, which in turn helps their revenue lines such as advertisements and event sponsors.

Overall, I think it is a great source to learn about the latest, the most comprehensive and the most effective strategies to online marketing.

Source: www.bbc.com/supoerpower

Where To Find That Authentic Korean Ingredient

We have seen the story of WebVan, which did not result in success due to the high inventory cost and the nature of products it was marketing. Food is consdiered challenging to sell online, partly due to its perishable character and partly due to consumers' preference for confirming the quality in store, However, there are some food stores that can be more active online. They will take advantages of online marketing such as bulk price, mass marketing, and consumer firnedly information.

Koa mart is an online Korean food store, delivering products to consumers in North America. Another Korean food store is H-mart, the largest offline Asian food store in North America.
They both have a rather narrower market, mostly Korean immigrants and international studnets. However, they have two strong competitive advantages: bulk price and market availability. As Korean food has still a narrower scale of consumers, they are not as accessible as Chinese food, for example. However, as more Koreans move to North America and more people grow their appetite for Korean food, the industry is getting more globalized. Therefore, people seek for authentic and cheaper Korean ingredients which are usually priced doubled in offline. In addition, Koreans living far from the Korean stores can now easily order their favorite cravings online.

What so neat about Koa Mart is the website that organizes the wide range of Korean products in different categories to allow easier search for consumers. Also, the products are cheaper than offline stores. The products range from processed food and health supplements to Korean DVD and restaurant table buzzer. It is also using social media like Facebook to promote Korean events. This viral markeitng can increase the web traffic and improve SEO.
H-mart is also availbale online to target consumers in wider range of geography by delivery. In addition, it has various events, targeting first generation housewives in a foreign country. The events include weekly special flyers, Cooking class, and Korean New Year Gift delivery.


As a more recognized and popular Korean supermarket, H-mart has a more polished website. Koa Mart may want to garnish their website to attract more online appetites. The appearance is often perceived to reflect what it can offer.


Koa Mart (LA): http://www.koamart.com
Facebook example: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=189415759520
H-mart (BC): hmart.ca

Food Website Design

The key to marketing food products is the desisgn of the website. As visual effect of food is as important as its taste, it is essential that food businesses, especially startup restaurants, display their best look online.

GourmetBusinessSolution (GBS) is a type of online marketing company, speicalized in marketing organic food. It postions as an expert in organic food to portray the image of professional character. The core serivces include the following:

-Marketing for new business startups
-Food sales and distribution
-Marketing and Advertising
-Public Relations
-Finance
-Business Development
-Account Management
-Mass Communications
-Internet Technologies and e-Commerce
-Web-Marketing, Web 2.0
-Graphic Design

One of the merits of consulting an online marketing company is the strong network it has built through years and the expert understanding of particular industry. For example, GBS has a more accurate grasp of which PR distribution site to display the press releases of client restuatnts. In addion, it can more easily get an access to targeted PR distribution site.



For example, a startup Korean restaurnats in Korea takes the advantages of online markeitng to expand its customer-base by consulting an online marketing company (EtoON marketing). The marketing company launches a post-payment service to attract more startup businesses in the midst of recession. Its strategy has the following steps:

1. Analysis on business marketability
2. Review on current menu and developing new menu
3. Study current sales and potential for future growth in sale
4. Meeting with the restaurant owner
5. Implement a profit sharing program


GBS website: http://www.gourmetbusinesssolutions.com/
Korean example: http://www.betanews.net/article/448687